Middle 9
Adam smiled as the two appeared in the doorway to his lab, laughing and joking together.
"I take it you've come to a conclusion." He asked, humour in his voice.
"Yup." Emma responded bouncily, taking a seat. Adam wondered absently if Shalimar was wearing off on her.
"We're going to do it!" Shalimar added. She didn't take a seat, instead leaning on Emma and wrapping her arms around her torso, appearing to Adam as a single being with two heads and four arms, both faces grinning at him maniacally. He shook off the disturbing image.
"OK then. Now we get down to the difficult stuff. There are a lot of things you need to know before we go ahead with this."
"Can I ask a question?" Adam looked up at Shalimar.
"Of course." Adam didn't miss the glance that Shalimar shared with Emma, or the reassurance that was in the reply.
"We wanted to know if it was possible to make sure the baby doesn't have our mutations." Adam sighed.
"No."
"No?"
"No, it's not possible. The procedure uses some of the gene manipulation that causes mutation. I'm very sorry, but in that respect there is nothing I can do. The mutation is feral and I'm hoping that because you are already feral, Shalimar, I won't have to do much to change the basis of what I'm working on. It isn't a complete feral mutation, only a partial one. Depending on the child we can see how much she is affected by the mutation and compensate. I don't want to have to remove the psionic genes," This at Emma. "Because I don't think they will be active, and I don't want to have to change more than I have to." They shared a smile and turned back to Adam.
"That's kind of what we expected." Emma admitted. "But we had to ask." Shalimar took a seat.
"I'm sorry."
"No, it's OK. You wanted to say some things?"
"That was one of them." He smiled. "The other relates to what's going to happen during the pregnancy. I explained that it was a higher than normal strain on the body? Mostly this is because of the speed at which the foetus develops. The feral genes cause this speed and your own feral genes will help you provide the energy for this process. It will mean you'll be more tired than usual, more easily worn out. You'll have to be careful. After three months you're coming off the team, no matter how fine you feel. It may have to be before that, we'll see how things progress. You're going to get dizzy spells, you're going to be uncoordinated. Morning sickness will be twice as bad for you as for anyone else, but you can take reassurance in the fact that at about five or six months you're going to be due. She will be premature and she will be very weak to start with, but she'll have all of genetics on her side."
"You keep calling it a her." Shalimar mentioned.
"The genetics of the whole thing means that's the only way it can be. There's nowhere for the Y chromosome to come from." Shalimar nodded.
"How dangerous is it for Shalimar?" Emma asked. Shalimar took her hand across the gap between their chairs, pulling them closer together across the small distance.
"Quite. This is an untried procedure. It's been done once before, but under different circumstances and was unsuccessful then. As far as I'm concerned I have all of the information I need to make this work successfully. The question is whether or not nature is going to give in that easily."