Road to nowhere, Arc 4 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 39 AD

Crunch time

All that time with no exercise had severely affected bone, connective tissue, and muscle. Even his fat reserves had dwindled dramatically.

"Damn, you look thin, Shepard." That was all too true. In the mirror he could see deep sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes, completely out of sync with his mental body image.

""Feeling fragile sucks… but I suppose it's better than feeling nothing at all." Shepard shuffled back to the hospital bed set up alongside Miranda's queen-size. Jack followed, looking concerned.

"It's all I can do to get out of bed and go to the toilet."

"You couldn't even do that four hours ago." There wasn't room for side-tables now. Even Miranda's office space was full of things that went beep faster when he got up.

"Michel injected some kind of nanite maintenance cluster. Tomorrow I'm allowed to swing 2kg weights. Even that gives me all sorts of warning twinges."

Jack made her way to the sofa, falling back, legs in air. "I'll bring mine."

Shepard sat back on the bed. "I'd look forward to that."

"Maybe we could do isotonics together. If the weights hurt."

"Miranda said bones are still mending, but she didn't say no to the weights."

"Miracles do happen. We'll get her involved too. She needs to de-stress. She's been teaching my kids unarmed combat."

This was an arresting mental vision. "Not marine hand-to-hand?"

"Nah, Toombs suggested that. He's got her ex-Cerberus kids doing it but Lawson suggested Aikido for my biotics from Grissom. Builds muscle tone, she says. Man-killing is for later. Is that humor?"

"Embryonic, but yes. It's also a good plan. Maybe I should do it, too."

"That shit will kill you if you overdo it. I've been trying to keep up and I've got aches where I didn't know I had muscles."

"But we are older. Chakwas and Michel think I can ramp up muscle tone and weight over the next six months."

"Tai Chi for you, mister, till you're better. Anything faster, you might break."

"Miranda thinks she can do better. She's going to put me on some steroid derivative, temporarily. There's a pill to counter side-effects, and something else to stop me losing bone."

"She knows her stuff. Take it."

"She's more edgy than I remember, though. What was that about going to string the pilot up by his balls?"

"That's just her making a point to her crew. To fully man Overlord she had to get extra bodies, but nearly all the available mercs worth having, left with Massani."

"There's a manpower shortage, right?"

"You got it. She got desperate and asked me. I told her to see Chambers, which made her pout, but next thing you know, Hackett's had Osoba suspend the sentences of some very naughty conscripts on condition they enlist with AD."

"Ah. That sounds like our girl. I hope you went with Miranda to the interviews."

"Sure. Miranda did the talking, but she's not the best judge sometimes. Like with Niket."

"I don't think she had other kids around much when she was little."

"Uh huh. Neither did I. Anyway, Kelly and I had vetos."

"What sort of conscripts were these?"

"The ones who got interviews had to be sparky, the pilot's an exception. Fighter jock, did something stupid and got kicked out of the Navy. Did something else really stoopid when his girl died; he joined Cat6, and got put in clink."

"Oho. Kelly saw some value in him?"

"Yeah. Muttered something about hope. Also, there were two others not terribly bright, but built like Vega. They weren't nasty or slow, exactly, but their brains didn't grow with their bodies, and they got in big trouble. Yesterday she buddied them with a couple of drop-dead gorgeous bratty PFC's who were caught running rations to their homies. It's been fun to watch."

"I can imagine."

"You couldn't get a knife between them. They follow Sanders around like puppies if her migraines aren't bad that day. Miranda otherwise. Yesterday one of those girls asked if she was the bitch of the crew. She actually said No, you are the crew of the bitch."

That made Shepard laugh, which hurt a little. "More Miranda humor?"

"Yeah. The old Miranda would have given her a cold stare. I blame you, Shepard. Anyway, interviews. She wasn't as picky as me. Most failed in the first minute of the interview. There were two who looked plausible but something twanged me wrong."

"How many did Kelly reject?"

"Anyone creeped Chambers out bad, like those two, they saw Coats afterwards. Smiles like a shark, that man. He gave them to his Russian friend. Mostly, though, Miri picked bright young villains who were interestingly foolish." Shepard nodded.

"In the end there were none over twenty-five. This boat is full of juvenile pirates. I love it." Jack got up, sat cross-legged on the double bed in front of him.

"Shep. Talk to me. What's eating you?"

"Eh?"

"I'm not your girl, you idiot, but I can tell when you're not happy. Did something happen between you and Kelly? You haven't talked about your kid, or her, at all. To anyone. Did you have some massive argument? 'Cos that doesn't sound like Kelly."

Shepard cradled his head in his hands. "Not exactly. There hasn't been time."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're back. Miranda too."

Now Shepard looked up, sharply.

"She doesn't understand why she gets to look after you all of a sudden, but she's so happy I heard her humming to herself doing the supply requisitions with Sanders."

"We didn't yell at each other, Jack. And I'm going Earthside partly so some Salarian doctor can look at my bones, but mostly because in ten days or so Kelly's due to pop, and I want to be there, and she wants me there."

"But?"

"But… I'd rather not say. Look, after a few months, they're going to redo some implants the Doctors are working on. Then I've got… three major missions Hackett wants me around for. Not directly in charge, but just in case."

"And one of them's the Nest, right?"

"Right."

Jack jumped up, grabbed his shoulders and kissed him. "Great!" Shepard blinked.

"What was that?"

"Sanders says I have to keep you alive and happy."

"That's funny. Kelly says I have to keep Miranda alive and happy."

Jack threw her head back in peals of laughter. Right then the door parted and Miranda walked in.

"What's so funny? Crash webbing, Jack, the kids are wrapped, we go in one minute. Bunk here with us. Shepard, what are you doing out of bed?"

Getaway vehicle

Once past N-3 there was a fairly long diversion cross-system to pick up a maintenance team. With a couple of hours before next transit, Sanders' tech troop filed into the subwell under engineering and looked around with interest at the webbing bunks next to the toolspace where Jack's old hidey-hole would have been on Normandy.

"Right, boys and girls, here's your digs for this leg of the trip back. It's a bit cramped, but it's close to engineering and it'll do till the cargo bays are sorted later."

"Do we just dump our kits here, Kahlee?"

"Yes. You have quarter of an hour to stow them and sort your emergency crash webbing slings. End of this run, we're picking up a proper medic, except Jana's a Cerberus officer. This was Harper's own doctor."

This was not well received. "She's not in jail?"

"She is in jail, Matthews. She and the Illusive Man were close. She's not like Chakwas, who was basically on a standard mercenary medic contract."

"But she's being sprung…" (Matthews) "… by Lawson?" (Hawthorne)

"Just like you."

"Actually Chakwas got us out and you got us here, Kahlee. We get it, though."

"Do you? You were Lawson's crew, she asked, I just facilitated. The other thing is Jana's your only hope for telling us what's going on inside your heads. This finishing each others' sentences business is making your fellow crew look sideways."

"Oh."

"Yes, Oh. So sort your lockers, pick up the toolsets and we head up to the med bay, clear the cold sleep bunks and set them up in port cargo space by the end of the watch. Jack's kids are doing the same with the XO's office, which she and I are taking over with a couple of scientists."

"This for a new mission, ma'am?"

"I'll let you know more later, but next run is to the Horsehead Nebula, five hundred parsecs away, it's taken two hundred days to get a relay link. Don't spread that around. Got it?"

"Aye, aye."

Evolution by other than natural selection

There were no dreams this morning. Shepard opened sleepy eyes. A monitor beeped. Miranda was getting up too.

He actually felt almost normal. It was an illusion which would be quickly dispelled by gravity. He stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.

"You're awake. Here's tea."

He turned over to see Miranda approach, still in PJs. "Am I allowed tea?"

"Of course. It's just theophylline and rather a lot of caffeine. Sit up."

Shepard obliged, took a sip. Slightly astringent but he felt better. "Thanks."

"No worries. Better for you than your evil synthetic coffee."

Miranda selected a blue-black skinsuit, draped it over the bed, undid her pyjama top, and stepped out of the bottoms. Shepard couldn't help staring. A monitor beeped faster; Miranda looked over her shoulder at it, turned back to him, and grinned.

"Well, some things are clearly coming back to life." She gyrated towards him in just bra and pants, and put hands on hips.

"All I can say is, yum. Ooh. You're beautiful when you blush. Scratch that, you're beautiful, period."

"I'm happy."

"So am I, I guess."

"Don't be naughty. Kelly will be upset."

Then she looked dismayed as John sighed, "I don't think so."

"Did you have some kind of bust-up?"

"No. But she won't stay with me."

"But you're having a baby!"

"Yeah."

Miranda rocked back on her heels. "Is that why you were out of sorts? Jack was muttering something, but frankly you looked terrible at first, I wasn't expecting happy-happy joy-joy."

"I've seen myself in the mirror."

"You're better than you were. In just a few hours you've filled out a bit. Wasting away, but more like the Shepard I knew. Is this baby blues?"

"Look, being a Dad gives me goosebumps, but life might be over any moment. It's just up then down. Doesn't help I barely knew my Dad. Is it OK to talk to you about this?"

"Babe, you can always talk to me. I thought I'd lost you forever. Kelly must have felt worse, with what I did."

"What did you do?"

Miranda suddenly looked grief-stricken. "Please, later?"

"Okay." It wasn't okay, he would have make inquiries. But let's deal with one life-shattering event at a time. Men are supposed to be bad at multitasking, hah.

"Miranda… I don't think I'm wired to understand this sort of drama by instinct, and it's hard to be sure what's going on intellectually."

"I'm not wired for it either. But I've studied it. She knows she's giving birth, and trust me that will be a massive trauma. You can't sugar-coat this. The pain and the damage is the price we pay for self-awareness."

Shepard considered that. "It's like the shrimp. Evolution in action."

"Say again?"

"Just something I remember from class. A shrimp which evolved as a hunter so it needed a bigger brain, but that compressed its throat so the only thing it could swallow was blood."

Miranda looked a bit shocked. "You surprise me, Shepard, all the time."

"Just high school, on board ship."

"You'd be amazed how few boys actually pay attention in high school. That's why more girls graduate. Anyway, she's educated, she's felt her body metamorphose, barely grown up and she knows what's coming… Bloody old fogeys used to call it hysteria. It's a perfectly rational response to being eaten alive by your progeny."

"Is she too young?"

"Biologically? Hell no. Kids used to get pregnant when they were thirteen. I think the record was nine, or six, something like that. Selecting for the barbaric."

"I guess we have tech now which prolongs our prime. We live to a hundred and sixty or so, if we get the treatments. That might help."

"Right. And she's had the treatment, courtesy Cerberus. So did you. Me too. But that treatment doesn't enable childbirth earlier! It only preserves child-bearing for a while longer, into what was once old age. Back before CRISPR genemods there was a quite definite ideal point, the bottom of the bathtub curve, for a woman to have a child. It's still a live issue. Pity the poor asari."

"Eh?"

"Well, for example, Samara had just three kids in a thousand-year lifetime, and that's typical, or they'd have a population problem almost as bad as the Krogan. Eezo exposure is responsible, of course, which has obvious implications for Jack too."

"Ah. I do see. What did you mean, 'Bathtub curve?'"

"A graph of bad consequences against time. Likelihood of failure of an engineering part, for example. Quite high at the start – it might be badly installed. And high at the end – the part wears out. Back then I'd be too old to expect to bear children, not that age matters in my case."

"Yes, I saw the dossier."

"I gathered that. Historically, one academic – Kathy Sanders – observed actually getting fertilized falls off in a woman's early forties. On top of which, after one's early thirties most spontaneously abort, because the quality of the ova declines."

"There might have been some movement since spaceflight? "

"Trust me, Kelly's still optimal. Hang on."

Still wearing the bare minimum, Miranda walked behind her vidscreen and began searching. Shepard shifted his legs off and sat on the bedside. The view was nicer.

"Right, here we are. "The Book of Ages", Desmond Morris, nineteen eighty-three, review of contemporary literature. The best balance between trauma too early for a young body, and the later genetic anomalies like Downs' syndrome, not to mention issues with bone loss, torn mesenteries and… various neoplasms… was twenty-two years of age. And here's another, by Wood, 'Fecundity and natural fertility in humans', nineteen eighty-nine, Oxford Review of Reproductive Biology. Same peak, twenty-two years old."

"That's fairly specific. What criteria?"

"Well, 'fecundability' Ability to conceive and bring to term. Also, infant mortality, defect-free embryos, – all have a similar effect… Lower risk of ectopic pregnancy."

"What's that?"

"You don't want to know. These days, the bottom of the bathtub curve shifts to late twenties, maybe even late thirties. But that estimate was published just before various forms of genetic therapy and other interventions became possible. Look, biologically your girl's close to ideal. Mentally? I had the impression she was positive about pregnancy, but… I think it scares her, too. Is that it, I wonder?"

"Don't know. I've barely had any time to talk with her. She cuddles nice. What I remember was heavenly. But I was barely awake. And, we didn't talk more than two minutes before she had to go."

"So she's running off? Hannah warned me about this."

"I don't think so. What she actually said was that she won't marry me. She'd take me if she could have me, but she can't have me –"

"I bet she's getting ready to run off…"

"– on the other hand, I can have her. That was the last thing she said before the door opened. So she's not running."

"Ah."

"Kelly also told me to look out for you." This made Miranda blink. "And I suspect she got Sanders to tell Jack to look out for me." Now Miranda laughed out loud.

"Jack's got other responsibilities. But Sanders can help look after them. Actually, it's like Kelly's trying to build support networks, behind the scenes."

"That would be in character."

"The problem is that she does this and then she thinks, job done, she can bugger off. I need to talk to your Mom."

"So do I."

Next chapter: #40, "Limbus Patrum"

Thursday, July 23, 2015