Stepha returned the greeting. “When last we spoke, you informed me that an additional attack on our youth would terminate alliance negotiations. It grieves me to report yet another attempted murder.”
“Attempted?” Alona asked. “Are you saying the assassins were unsuccessful?”
“Thankfully, yes.” Stepha indicated the soldiers standing guard by the door. “Aelyx and Syrine are unharmed. A young guardsman—”
Alona cut him off with a flash of her palm. “Then we shall overlook it.”
Stepha’s jaw went slack, mirroring Aelyx’s shock.
Alona hadn’t conferred with her fellow Elders—she’d made up her mind in an instant, without hearing Aelyx’s pleas for mercy. This was the response he’d hoped for, but it made no sense. In his eighteen years on L’eihr, The Way had never overlooked a crime.
“I beg your pardon?” Stepha said.
“The young ones are safe,” Alona replied. “Negotiations shall continue.” She effectively dismissed them by asking, “Do you require further assistance?”
“Uh…uh,” Stepha stammered. “No.”
“May the Sacred Mother watch over and protect you.” She lifted two fingers and ended the transmission.
Aelyx and the ambassador shared a look of utter confusion.
Much like his close call with the letter bomb, Aelyx wondered if he’d imagined the entire exchange. Not that he was complaining, but why would L’eihr continue to tolerate acts of terrorism, especially if all they wanted was fresh genetic material? Human DNA was easily acquired, as were colonists.
Aelyx couldn’t help wondering if The Way wanted more from mankind than they’d originally claimed. And if that were the case, what did his people truly stand to gain from this alliance?
Chapter Eight
Babies weren’t as stinky as Cara remembered. From the top end, they smelled halfway decent.
She buried her nose in a toddler’s honey-brown curls and pulled in a sweet breath. The little guy gripped his bedrail and bounced in place, flashing a gummy smile while reaching out to her with his eyes. His thoughts were jumbled, but Cara felt his fascination with her bright orange hair, which he desperately wanted to capture between his fingers. The tiny clone was heart-meltingly cute, not to mention bright. This nursery assignment wasn’t so bad. Maybe Cara could handle kids of her own someday…like in a couple of decades.
“Cah-ra,” Elle called from the next crib. “Stop smelling that boy and come help me. This one’s sick.” She peered down the back of the child’s pants and recoiled in disgust. “From both ends.”
Cara covered her nose as the stench wafted in her direction. Never mind about the hypothetical kids. She’d let Troy carry on the Sweeney line. She glanced at the head caretaker for guidance and received an encouraging nod from the old woman.
“Poor little guy.” Cara pressed a hand to the boy’s forehead. No fever. “Do we need to quarantine him?” The Aegis had strict policies regarding contagious bugs, which made sense, considering the number of kids who lived in close quarters here.
“If it’s viral, yes. If it’s bacterial or food-borne, no.” Elle plucked something from her pocket that looked like a long white spoon wrapped in plastic. “I won’t know until I analyze his stool.”
Oh, gross. Cara did not need that visual.
Poor Elle looked ready to hurl, despite her medical background. Her new position as Constant Alibi meant she accompanied Cara everywhere, even to the bathroom for midnight pit stops. But diaper inspection was above and beyond the call of duty.
“Sorry to get you dragged into this,” Cara said, stripping the baby’s clothes.
“Not a problem.” Elle dipped the collector tool into the baby’s diaper. “I needed a rotation in the nursery to complete my medical training.” She grimaced while sliding a cap over her sample. “I couldn’t avoid it forever.”
“Not a fan of kids, huh?”
Elle lifted the baby to the nearby basin and tapped a foot pedal to fill the sink with warm water. “I don’t dislike younglings. I simply have no experience with them.”
“None?” Cara removed the boy’s dirty sheets and dropped them in the sonic purifier bin. “You never had to babysit?”
Elle laughed, though Cara didn’t see what was funny. “Not everyone is suited to work with small children.”
Well, sure. Kids were annoying, but if L’eihrs wanted to imitate the human method of reproduction, they needed to learn to care for their young. “Aren’t they shutting down the artificial wombs?” Cara asked.
“Our geneticists disabled the wombs months ago.” Elle dodged splashes while she washed the baby with all the confidence of a pig at a bacon festival. “Haven’t you noticed the absence of newborns?”
“Here, let me.” Using her hip, Cara nudged Elle aside and finished the job. “So there won’t be any more babies soon? Won’t that create a weird generation gap?”
“Not really.” Elle opened her medic bag and inserted the spoon tool into a testing device, then sanitized her hands. “The oldest clones are nearly twenty. Next year they’ll leave the Aegis for their designated work dormitories, and when they find approved l’ihans, we’ll deactivate their fertility suppressants.”
Cara grabbed a towel from beneath the sink. “What suppressants?”
“The nano-chip beneath your wrist,” Elle explained, “also halts your ovulation. When you’re approved to breed, I’ll scan your wrist and reverse the settings.”
Approved to breed? What was she, a prize heifer? “What if I don’t want kids?”
Elle handed over a cloth diaper and wrinkled her brow. “Why wouldn’t you want to pass on your gifts? Once the child is born, you won’t be burdened with it.”
Cara had to focus on diapering the baby before he got sick again, but as soon as she secured his hind end, she held him close and whirled to face Elle. “Are you telling me nothing will change—you’ll pop out your spawn, then hand them over to the Aegis?”
Elle drew back, lips parting in offense. “You make it sound so sinister. I enjoyed growing up in this Aegis with my peers. I never felt deprived of anything.” She patted the baby clutched in Cara’s arms. “If you wish to house your offspring, perhaps you’ll be permitted to do so on the colony. I’ve heard they hope to model a more humanistic lifestyle there.”
Cara relaxed her death grip on the infant and shuffled to the changing station to dress him. So, assuming she decided to have kids, and assuming The Way approved her request to “breed,” she might be allowed to keep her children? That was twisted, no matter how Elle tried to spin it.
A small voice whispered, Maybe Troy’s right. Maybe you don’t belong here, but she shook that thought out of her head. It didn’t matter—she probably wasn’t having kids anyway.
Elle read the results of her test sample and smiled. “Excellent news, it’s a food-borne illness.” She ruffled the infant’s hair and told Cara, “You dress him and replenish his electrolytes while I alert the nursery kitchen staff.” Then she violated the Constant Alibi rule by leaving the room.
“That’s all right,” Cara said to the nearly naked bundle in her arms. “I can go ten minutes without getting in trouble.” She stroked his soft, chubby cheek with one finger. “Can’t I, little guy?”
He responded by vomiting down the front of her tunic.
Soft laughter sounded from nearby, and the head caretaker hurried over to take the baby. The woman’s face was heavily lined but gentle, her smile a beacon of sunshine in an otherwise bleak afternoon. Unlike most of the older generation, she had life in her eyes, that spark the others had lost. She reminded Cara of her late Grammy O’Shea, so from that moment, Cara dubbed the woman Gram.
“You’re not a real caretaker until you’ve been christened in this way,” Gram said in a thick accent. With a gentle hand, she pushed Cara toward the hall. “You’ll find clean tunics in the washroom.”
When Cara had wiped down her chest with a damp cloth and changed clothes, she returned to the nursery. She scanned the vast room for Gram, beginning with the transparent cribs, pressed flush against one another with see-through dividers so the babies could socialize. From there, she turned her gaze to the various stations—specialized places for feeding, changing, bathing, intellectual stimulation, open play, and even physical contact. Centuries of research had taught L’eihrs the precise amount of touch a child needed to maximize brain development, and caretakers didn’t dole out a minute longer than necessary.
Cara noted the absence of swings, cradles, and rocking chairs. L’eihrs were big on “self-soothing” and didn’t want the babies to grow dependent on motion for comfort. There were no newborns here at the moment, but according to rumor, they cried a lot for the first two months, then kind of gave up the fight. Thinking about it made Cara’s heart ache. It wasn’t right, breaking a person’s spirit fresh out of the package like that.
“Here, Miss Sweeney.” Gram waved her over to the front window, where the afternoon sun filtered inside and bathed a pair of infants lying face-up on a floor mat.
Cara strode across the nursery, still searching for her sick baby. She eventually found him at one of the feeding stations, suckling clear fluid from a plastic sack attached to the wall. She motioned toward him. “I can feed him his electrolytes.”