Mia didn't know everything, but so far as Susannah could make out, Walter/Flagg had offered the spirit later to be known as Mia the ultimate Faustian bargain. If she was willing to give up her nearly eternal but discorporate state and become a mortal woman, then she could become pregnant and bear a child. Walter was honest with her about how little she would actually be getting for all she'd be giving up. The baby wouldn't grow as normal babies did - as Baby Michael had done before Mia's unseen but worshipful eyes - and she might only have him for seven years, but oh what wonderful years they could be!
Beyond this, Walter had been tactfully silent, allowing Mia to form her own pictures: how she would nurse her baby and wash him, not neglecting the tender creases behind the knees and ears; how she would kiss him in the honeyspot between the unfledged wings of his shoulderblades; how she would walk with him, holding both of his hands in both of hers as he toddled; how she would read to him and point out Old Star and Old Mother in the sky and tell him the story of how Rustie Sam stole the widow's best loaf of bread; how she would hug him to her and bathe his cheek with her grateful tears when he spoke his first word, which would, of course, beMama.
Susannah listened to this rapturous account with a mixture of pity and cynicism. Certainly Walter had done one hell of a job selling the idea to her, and as ever, the best way to do that was to let the mark sell herself. He'd even proposed a properly Satanic period of proprietorship: seven years.Just sign on the dotted line, madam, and please don't mind that whiff of brimstone; I just can't seem to get the smell out of my clothes.
Susannah understood the deal and still had trouble swallowing it. This creature had given up immortality for morning sickness, swollen and achy br**sts, and, in the last six weeks of her carry, the need to pee approximately every fifteen minutes. And wait, folks, there's more! Two and a half years of changing diapers soaked with piss and loaded with shit! Of getting up in the night as the kid howls with the pain of cutting his first tooth (and cheer up, Mom, only thirty-one to go). That first magic spit-up! That first heartwarming spray of urine across the bridge of your nose when the kid lets go as you're changing his clout!
And yes, there would be magic. Even though she'd never had a child herself, Susannah knew there would be magic even in the dirty diapers and the colic if the child were the result of a loving union. But to have the child and then have him taken away from you just when it was getting good, just as the child approached what most people agreed was the age of reason, responsibility, and accountability? To then be swept over the Crimson King's red horizon? That was an awful idea. And was Mia so besotted by her impending motherhood that she didn't realize the little shehad been promised was now being whittled away? Walter/Flagg had come to her in Fedic, Scenic Aftermath of the Red Death, and promised her seven years with her son. On the telephone in the Plaza-Park, however, Richard Sayre had spoken of a mere five.
In any case, Mia had agreed to the dark man's terms. And really, how much sport could there have been in getting her to do that? She'd been made for motherhood, had arisen from thePrim with that imperative, had known it herself ever since seeing her first perfect human baby, the boy Michael. How could she have said no? Even if the offer had only been for three years, or for one, how? Might as well expect a long-time junkie to refuse a loaded spike when it was offered.
Mia had been taken into the Arc 16 Experimental Station. She'd been given a tour by the smiling, sarcastic (and undoubtedly frightening) Walter, who sometimes called himself Walter of End-World and sometimes Walter of All-World. She'd seen the great room filled with beds, awaiting the children who would come to fill them; at the head of each was a stainless-steel hood attached to a segmented steel hose. She did not like to think what the purpose of such equipment might be. She'd also been shown some of the passages under the Castle on the Abyss, and had been in places where the smell of death was strong and suffocating. She - there had been a red darkness and she -
"Were you mortal by then?" Susannah asked. "It sounds as though maybe you were."
"I was on my way," she said. "It was a process Walter calledbecoming. "
"All right. Go on."
But here Mia's recollections were lost in a dark fugue - not todash, but far from pleasant. A kind of amnesia, and it wasred. A color Susannah had come to distrust. Had the pregnant woman's transition from the world of the spirit to the world of the flesh - her trip to Mia - been accomplished through some other kind of doorway? She herself didn't seem to know. Only that there had been a time of darkness - unconsciousness, she supposed - and then she had awakened "...as you see me. Only not yet pregnant, of course."
According to Walter, Mia could not actually make a baby, even as a mortal woman. Carry, yes. Conceive, no. So it came to pass that one of the demon elementals had done a great service for the Crimson King, taking Roland's seed as female and passing it on to Susannah as male. And there had been another reason, as well. Walter hadn't mentioned it, but Mia had known.
"It's the prophecy," she said, looking into Fedic's deserted and shadowless street. Across the way, a robot that looked like Andy of the Calla stood silent and rusting in front of the Fedic Café, which promisedGOOD MEELS CHEEP .