"LABOR...HAS COMMENCED," said the amplified voice, dropping the John Wayne imitation. "LABOR...HAS COMMENCED." Then, in a horrible (and nasal) Bob Dylan drawl that set her teeth on edge, the voice sang: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU...BABE!...HAPPY BIRTHDAY...TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY...DEAR MORDRED...HAPPY BIRTHDAY...TO YOU!"
Susannah visualized a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall behind her, and when she turned it was, of course, right there (she had not imagined the little sign reading ONLY YOU AND SOMBRA CAN HELP PREVENT CONSOLE FIRES, however - that, along with a drawing of Shardik o' the Beam in a Smokey the Bear hat, was some other joker's treat). As she hurried across the cracked and uneven floor to get the extinguisher, skirting the fallen ceiling panels, another pain ripped into her, lighting her belly and thighs on fire, making her want to double over and bear down on the outrageous stone in her womb.
Not going to take long,she thought in a voice that was part Susannah and part Detta.No ma'am. This chap comin in on the express train!
But then the pain let up slightly. She snatched the extinguisher off the wall when it did, trained the slim black horn on the flaming control panel, and pressed the trigger. Foam billowed out, coating the flames. There was a baleful hissing sound and a smell like burning hair.
"THE FIRE...IS OUT," the Voice of the Dogan proclaimed. "THE FIRE...IS OUT." And then changing, quick as a flash, to a plummy British Lord Haw-Haw accent:
"I SAY,JOLLY GOOD SHOW, SEW-ZANNAH, AB-SO-LUTELYBRILLLL-IANT! "
She lurched across the minefield of the Dogan's floor again, seized the microphone, and pressed the transmit toggle. Above her, on one of the TV screens still operating, she could see that Mia was on the move again, crossing Sixtieth.
Then Susannah saw the green awning with the cartoon pig, and her heart sank. Not Sixtieth, but Sixty-first.The hijacking mommybitch had reached her destination.
"Eddie!" she shouted into the microphone. "Eddie or Roland!" And what the hell, she might as well make it a clean sweep. "Jake! Pere Callahan! We've reached the Dixie Pig and we're going to have this damn baby! Come for us if you can, but be careful!"
She looked up at the screen again. Mia was now on the Dixie Pig side of the street, peering at the green awning. Hesitating. Could she read the words DIXIE PIG? Probably not, but she could surely understand the cartoon. The smiling, smoking pig. And she wouldn't hesitate long in any case, now that her labor had started.
"Eddie, I have to go. I love you, sugar! Whatever else happens, you remember that! Never forget it!I love you! This is..." Her eye fell on the semicircular readout on the panel behind the mike. The needle had fallen out of the red. She thought it would stay in the yellow until the labor was over, then subside into the green.
Unless something went wrong, that was.
She realized she was still gripping the mike.
"This is Susannah-Mio, signing off. God be with you, boys. God and ka."
She put the microphone down and closed her eyes.
Twelve
Susannah sensed the difference in Mia immediately. Although she'd reached the Dixie Pig and her labor had most emphatically commenced, Mia's mind was for once elsewhere. It had turned to Odetta Holmes, in fact, and to what Michael Schwerner had called the Mississippi Summer Project. (What the Oxford rednecks had calledhim was The Jewboy.) The emotional atmosphere to which Susannah returned wasfraught, like still air before a violent September storm.
Susannah! Susannah, daughter of Dan!
Yes, Mia.
I agreed to mortality.
So you said.
And certainly Mia had looked mortal in Fedic. Mortal andterribly pregnant.
Yet I've missed most of what makes the short-time life worthwhile. Haven't I?The grief in that voice was awful; the surprise was even worse.And there's no time for you to tell me. Not now.
Go somewhere else,Susannah said, with no hope at all.Hail a cab, go to a hospital. We'll have it together, Mia. Maybe we can even raise it toge -
If I have it anywhere but here, it will die and we'll die with it.She spoke with utter certainty.And I willhave it. I've been cheated of all but my chap, and I willhave it. But...Susannah...before we go in...you spoke of your mother.
I lied. It was me in Oxford. Lying was easier than trying to explain time travel and parallel worlds.
Show me the truth. Show me your mother. Show me, I beg!
There was no time to debate this request pro and con; it was either do it or refuse on the spur of the moment. Susannah decided to do it.
Look,she said.
Thirteen
In the Land of Memory, the time is alwaysNow.
There is an Unfound Door
(O lost)
and when Susannah found it and opened it, Mia saw a woman with her dark hair pulled back from her face and startling gray eyes. There is a cameo brooch at the woman's throat. She's sitting at the kitchen table, this woman, in an eternal shaft of sun. In this memory it is always ten minutes past two on an afternoon in October of 1946, the Big War is over, Irene Daye is on the radio, and the smell is always gingerbread.
"Odetta, come and sit with me," says the woman at the table, she who is mother. "Have something sweet. You lookgood, girl."
And she smiles.
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again!