Author's Note: Here it is, as promised. I think I made Dylan out to be a bit of an idiot at points though. And the song "I Got You Babe" was sung by, and presumably belongs to, Sonny and Cher.
I have a general announcement here: this fall, starting with the next chapter or so, the individual chapters will be posted at a slower rate than usual. The whole less time to write thing, which equals less time to type, which pretty much means less stuff to post as quickly. I will try to get them up as soon as possible, but I will be needing more time per chapter. I'm sorry in advance for delays, but it's an inescapable hazard. Thanks for your patience and, as always, your taking the time to leave a review and let me know what you think.
The Child
Chapter Four: Discussion
By B.L.A. the Mouse
Dylan called the entire crew together on Obs. Deck later that day, including their newest member. They arrived at various intervals over ten minutes. Dylan, obviously, was first, in a very contemplative mood as he leaned against the window railing. Considerations on tracking Carmen, continuing the mission, and taking care of an infant battled for focus in his mind, so occupying him that he never heard Trance enter.
The girl was equally distracted by her thoughts, but hers differed greatly in type. She was musing over the probabilities and diverging timelines, all having to do with what happened to the baby. In most, one of the crew took care of the child, whether or not they found Carmen- the majority of those would contribute to the "perfect possible future" that her younger self was so fixed on. In a very few, Carmen was persuaded to take him back; only one of those turned out well, with exacting circumstances. The one or two that they gave him away to someone else- orphanage, adoptive parent, and similar options- were too muddled to tell much, due to shifting realities. How are we going to get this to work? she wondered, standing off to the side a few feet from Dylan.
Beka and Harper arrived next, debating loudly where Carmen would go first. Harper thought Berlin drift, in the next system over, while Beka was pretty sure she'd go one or two slipjumps farther away, like to Pavlov or Guatemala drifts, or maybe a couple planets over. They sat on the edge of one of the planters, still arguing.
Next to last was Tyr, brooding over the possibility of an infant on board. It would be a threat to security and efficiency, just for starters. One person would have to attend to it a good deal of the time, reducing manpower for vital functions. For purely personal reasons, he was disturbed by the thought. After having to leave Tamerlane with the Orca matriarch, even for protection and furthering his purposes, the situation struck him as skewed.
Rommie was the last to enter, carrying the baby. After a quick glance around, she crossed the room and sat next to Beka. With the exception of Trance, the crew watched her, or more accurately, the baby, intently; Trance was still absorbed in her thoughts.
With her arrival, the mood of the room changed. Dylan took notice, walking to the center of the room and clearing his throat. Nobody snapped to attention, but one by one they looked over at him. "I think you have some idea of why we're here," he began, looking around the room.
He was met with a chorus of nods and a couple of eyerolls. Harper said, "Uh, Boss? Duh."
Treating Harper to his best warning look, the captain continued. "I decided that everyone should weigh in on this, since it affects all of us, at least temporarily."
"Why temporarily?" Rommie was not happy with the sound of that.
Dylan sighed heavily. He hadn't wanted to have to go over that with her in front of the crew, knowing by now how fond she was of the baby, but apparently, he was going to have to. "We can't take care of him for any longer than a few months. This is a warship, not a nursery. We have to get him back to Carmen or find someone who can take care of him long-term, because we can't," he finished, hoping that she wouldn't take it up.
Tyr added, "We would always be one crew member short for anything. With only six crew, that's a survival hazard."
"Everything's survival to you, isn't it?" Beka remarked. He ignored her.
Harper asked, incredulously, "You want to take him back to Carmen? Are you forgetting that she's the one who abandoned him? She left! Vamoosed! Carmen is so far out of the picture that she's not even in the album, and you want to take him back to her?"
Beka glanced between him and Dylan. "That would cover it."
Dylan was amazed at the minor mutiny. "So its three-three for keeping him?" He couldn't quite believe it. He had expected Rommie to have a problem with giving him back, but hadn't thought that anyone else would. Beka had a very pragmatic view of things, and even Harper had his moments of logic; he had trusted that they would have the same opinion as he and Tyr.
"Make it four-two." Trance stepped forward and joined the crew, making it perfectly clear what her opinion was. "You really shouldn't take him back to Carmen."
He looked over them helplessly- Rommie, Beka, Harper, Trance, all arrayed against him. Crew versus conscience. "I'm sorry, I can't do that," he said finally. "She may have left, but we have to find her. We owe them that much."
"Oh, for..." Beka muttered. Everyone with the exception of Tyr had a similar statement, expressed in various ways.
"Until then, someone has to take care of him."
The room fell silent, with several glances exchanged between the crew, each look skittering off the answering one. No one volunteered, for whatever their reason. Beka, Harper- neither knew how to take care of much besides themselves and their ships. Dylan had no intention of doing it, and Tyr still felt that uneasy sense of injustice. Trance was unsure as to whether to volunteer any information, her gaze shifting from person to person.
Rommie waited, looking around, for a moment. She wanted to, but was unaccountably unnerved, having to swallow hard before speaking. "I'll do it," she offered, her voice sounding small to her own ears.
Five pairs of eyes swiveled around to look at her. That became six when the hologram joined the group. There was a pause before she said, "Are you sure? We aren't programmed for child care."
"I've already downloaded several texts available, and I don't know if anyone else has experience with taking care of children."
"I don't," Beka volunteered.
Harper chimed in, "Me, neither."
Tyr muttered something about little useful knowledge.
Dylan heard him and wondered briefly- after all, Tyr had been the one raised with children of all ages- but added, "None of us. Except... Trance?"
The girl started. She had been drifting between listening and her thoughts, but recovered quickly. "I have some."
"Trance does have that advantage," he began, glancing back at Rommie.
"No!" The brusque bark made several of the crew jump. Trance modulated her tone before continuing. "He's used to Rommie, not me, even this early. If you change caretakers now, he'll have to adjust all over again." She paused for a quick internal debate and decided. "Besides, he shouldn't stay with me. This never happened in my future, but giving him to me is a bad idea." Their faces were disbelieving. "Please, trust me. Let Rommie take care of him."
The divine decision. "All right. Rommie, you have care until we find Carmen. Each of us will be expected to lend assistance when it's needed and take care of him during Rommie's shifts. Understood?"
A chorus of yess and nods, same as earlier.
Dylan assessed them. "Good. Rommie, I'm giving you this week off until you're adjusted, then you're going to be back on light duty to see how it goes." He left after finishing the statement, Tyr only a few steps behind.
Rommie looked over at Trance. "Thank you."
"I just told him the truth. I would be a bad choice. Even if I have some experience, you're the one-" She stopped. She wasn't sure whether she should say some of the things she knew, and settled for finishing with, "one who had the best advantage for taking care of him. You don't have to sleep!" That netted smiles from the other three, even though they were aware, to a degree, that that had been an evasion. "May I?" She held out her arms.
"Here." Rommie stood and placed the baby carefully in the alien girls arms. He had been dozing through the entire discussion, but the movement woke him. Instead of crying, he just opened his eyes and waved one arm at a dangling dreadlock.
Harper stood on his toes and looked over Beka's shoulder. "Is he supposed to look like that? He's not exactly good-looking."
"He does look weird," Beka agreed, standing next to Trance. She'd seen the baby right after he was born, but that had been then, and she had assumed he'd look normal by now. Putting a hand on Harper's head, she steered him to the side, opposite Trance in the small circle. "Here. Stop breathing down my neck."
Rommie gave her engineer a look that said, quite clearly, he was an idiot. "Yes, he's supposed to look like that."
"But he's a conehead!"
The three women exchanged a confused look that somehow went three ways. None of them knew the reference and by unspoken consent didn't ask. Instead, Beka changed the subject. "He's quiet. I thought babies cried all the time."
"Some babies are pretty quiet. He seems to be one of them."
"D'you mind if I try holding him?"
Trance handed him to her. "Careful, support his head."
"I'm not completely stupid about kids." Beka took him very carefully, positioning him like Trance and Rommie had. He was heavy, soft and warm, and instead of staying alert, like with Trance, he snuggled into her chest and his eyes drifted a little bit closed. "See? Not that hard. Believe it or not, I have held a baby before."
"I haven't," Harper said. At the looks the other three shot him, he asked, "What? You try growing up on Earth. For the first couple years, moms never let kids outta their sight, and you don't even think of picking one up unless you're really close family or friends."
Thinking of what she had seen while visiting the planet, Rommie could see the logic. It wasn't surprising in a society where starvation, disease, and slavery were rampant.
Beka inquired, "Do you want to try? They're not that easy to break."
"Ah, no. I think I'll pass." Harper looked antsy again, and he was. He'd never had much contact with pregnancy or kids younger than about five. "I've got something to work on. Ciao." He exited at top speed, before anyone could ask any more questions.
Another puzzled glance bounced between the other three. "It's Harper," Beka finally said, by way of explanation. "Hey, did Carmen ever get around to naming him? I mean, you can't exactly call him 'him' or 'you' the rest of the time he's here."
Rommie sighed, almost in defeat. "Beka, she never even acknowledged him as a human being. Whenever she was forced to notice him, she called him 'it.' Didn't you hear her on Med deck? If she doesn't even do that much, do you think she's going to bother with a name?"
The woman was surprised. "I didn't." As if the topic disturbed him, the baby made a gasping cry. "Um..."
"Probably hungry. Here." She took him back. "It's almost time for his next bottle, anyway," she added, leaving quickly, wanting to get him fed.
Beka watched her go. "How do you think she'll do?"
"I wouldn't have told Dylan to give him to her if she wasn't able to do it," Trance said quietly.
Rommie sat on a chair in her quarters. The baby was lying on his back on her lap. He had been awake for a while, and she'd already attended to his needs. Now all he wanted to do, apparently, was cry. "You're making a liar out of me," she commented, "and after I told Beka you were quiet."
No reaction. He didn't even vary his pitch.
"Okay, let's try something else." Rommie stood, cuddling the infant. She hadn't really thought reasoning with him would have much of an effect, but it had been worth a shot. A quick check of her database wasn't much help either. Damn. No lullabies.
With impeccable timing, her alternate self flickered in. "And that is why you shouldn't have volunteered."
"I doubt the rest of the crew would do much better. We aren't exactly a ship of nursemaids." She gave the hologram an impatient glare. "And if you're going to be here, you may as well be helpful. See if you can find a lullaby or something in our database that I can use to keep him quiet."
Andromeda returned the expression with interest while she searched. "Nothing," she reported after a moment.
Rommie sighed, then started searching again, broadening her horizons this time. Then she found something; Harper had been singing it only a day or two ago, along with similar stuff from the same era. It was merely old-fashioned Earth pop, but it would work in a pinch. Keeping her voice low, she started, "'They say we're young, and we don't know, and won't find out until we grow...'"
The hologram winced. It wasn't that Rommie's singing voice was bad- in fact, it was rather good. It was that the song in question was not one of her favorites.
"'Well, I don't know if all that's true, but you've got me, and baby, I've got you.'"
"Would you please stop!" It was a clear command.
Rommie paused. "Why? It's working." That was the truth. The baby had ceased crying and stared up at her, expression only a degree short of positively amazed. She kept humming the tune, over Andromeda's protests, until she isolated and activated the program she wanted, and the security recording of Harper singing started playing, picking up where she left off.
After she set the still-silent baby back down in the crib, the android turned to face her hologram. "What did you mean when you said I shouldn't have volunteered?"
"Exactly what I said. Not only are you inexperienced with children, your emotions are engaged again, and that isn't good."
"There is nothing wrong with displaying emotions to a child," Rommie argued, knowing her main AI would probably ignore that point, however well supported. Her problem never seemed to be with emotion under the circumstances, but emotion in general. That division of viewpoint seemed to be the main point of difference between them.
"That's not what I mean and you know it."
The two glowered at each other for a moment, a clash of separate and identical personalities. Neither of them were entirely willing to concede that the other had a point. Rommie knew she shouldn't get too emotionally attached to the child, and Andromeda was well aware of the fact that some affection should be shown to the child. They had both reviewed the two texts that Carmen had brought on board when it became apparent that the child was staying for a few weeks at least. They had also gone over the ones that had been brought back from the planet visit Beka'd been sent on, in order to get supplies for the infant. Too bad they hadn't thought to get a book of lullabies on that one.
"Privacy mode," Rommie ordered, and felt a curious ripple of satisfaction as the hologram frowned and disappeared. It was then that she realized the recording had ended and the baby was still quiet. A quick check revealed that he was asleep again. "That was effective."
Dylan pressed the door chime, realizing too late that he probably shouldn't have done that. The door opened, with no sign that he had disturbed the baby.
"Come in," Rommie said, from somewhere beyond view from the door. He stepped in and glanced around.
He hadn't been in her quarters much, and not at all since Carmen took off. They were the standard senior officer's quarters that all the crew had, one by one, moved into, with a bedroom, bath, and main room. Unlike the others, though, with personal touches determined by the person, hers had looked almost sterile, with nothing to break up the military-issue look of the room. As far as he knew, she didn't use the bedroom except for storing items and clothes, and the bathroom for cleaning her synthetic epidermis on the rare occasions that she had somehow gotten dirt or grease on it. Now, a corner of the main room had evidently been converted to use for the baby. The crib had been taken from Med bay; hed never been quite sure why they had one, but now was extremely glad they did. A few feet away, there stood a wide chest of drawers, with a flat top at about waist height. Rommie stood beside it, folding thick rectangles and pieces of cloth onto one end.
"Dylan!" She stopped folding the diapers and stepped over. She had only seen him in passing in the last week, since she'd spent most of her time in her quarters with the baby and not been on duty.
He didn't quite know where to start. He should have been to talk to her sooner, but through some quirk of fate hed been legitimately busy. "Um... where's the baby?"
"He's asleep," she said simply. "In the crib, of course."
"All right. Where'd you get the furniture?"
"Oh, this?" She indicated the dresser. It now doubled as a changing table- not its original purpose, but effective as of three weeks before. "I found it in the storage bay. It's interesting what variety of things you can find there."
"But why do we have it in the first place?"
"It was a gift from the craftsmen on Atlas Prime, remember? Four months ago."
"Ah. Right," he said, even though he barely remembered that particular planet. "What's the fabric for?"
Rommie looked at him like he was an imbecile. She didn't do it often, but once in a while it was an apt description, like when he asked a completely obvious question. "Blankets, baby clothes, and diapers. Beka bought some when she went on the supplies run, remember?" Carmen had gotten very few things before the baby was born, and they had needed some things that she had forgotten or neglected.
"That many?" It was a surprisingly tall stack.
"Yes."
He decided to take her word for it.
She turned back to what she was doing. She wanted to get this out of the way before Trance took over for her shift. "I don't think you came down just to ask what these were for," giving him an opening.
Dylan paused, knowing that she would not appreciate most of what he was about to say. "Rommie, we contacted the nearest FTA registry. There are almost three hundred ships registered as the Starlight, but none of them have captains or crew that answer to Carmen's description."
She started to breathe a sigh of relief. She realized by now that she didn't want to find Carmen, and was actually glad that they hadn't, at least not yet. His next sentence punctured her hopes quickly.
"That doesn't list every single ship, however. We could find her another way. Everyone leaves some kind of trail that we can follow." He saw her shoulders slump and felt like a galaxy-class heel. He stepped up beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I know you want him to stay onboard, but we can't take care of him here. We don't have equipment, big enough quarters, any sort of caretakers on a permanent basis- we can't do it."
"Why not? We can buy what we need. These quarters could be usable- or we could connect them with another." She had already thought of some of the more salient points. "As for getting people to take care of him, theres usually at least one crewmember off-duty. Trance is willing to help."
"What about Tyr? And Harper, and Beka? Not everyone is able or willing to help, and you may not be available every hour of the day," he argued, following her as she left the fabric pile. "What about during battles? We need all hands on Command deck. And we have a diplomatic function with the Perseids in less than a month. If we can't find Carmen by then, we're going to have to pull someone from the crew for the express purpose of looking after him. It depletes resources no matter what."
"We need more crew anyway!" Rommie picked up a fallen bottle and set it on the dresser, trying not to let her personal opinions get the best of her.
"But-"
He was interrupted by the start of a wail. The baby had woken up. "He's early," Rommie muttered. "Can you mix the formula? Everything's on the table there."
"Okay..." Dylan stared at the things on the small end table. Everything was there, from bottles to hot water in a thermal container. The only thing that was missing was instructions. He started sorting through the rows of objects in an attempt to find something resembling directions.
Rommie picked up the baby, now starting to turn red in the face. "Hey, stop crying, you're all right, you'll be fed soon." She kept murmuring things in that vein as she changed his diaper and rewrapped the small blanket around him, even as he kept on screaming. "How's the formula coming?"
"Not very well." Dylan had finally located the directions- finding them, obviously, on the label of the formula container- and succeeded in pouring a few drops of hot water right on the back of his hand. "Ouch!"
She gave him an amused look. "Here, take him and I'll get it." She carefully set the baby in Dylan's arms; while she trusted him with a lot of things, she knew he hadn't gotten near one in 304 years- give or take a few hundred.
Equally carefully, he propped the baby up against his chest and talked over the cries. "Rommie, you're getting too attached to him. We can't keep him onboard, and you'll only hurt yourself if you get too fond of him." He watched her face as she tested the temperature of the formula.
"It's ready," she finally said, her face a complete mask. "If you'll give him back, I'll feed him now."
It was against all protocol and chains of command, but he obeyed the order written clearly in her eyes. Dylan handed back the infant and started moving toward the door. "You have the next duty shift, remember."
"I know. Trance is going to take him then."
Rommie didn't look at him as he left the room. Offering the bottle to the baby, she ignored the single hot teardrop that splashed onto his blanket.