Heavy Weather

"Boy, it really is that serious," Jane said.

"How is Jerry? Are you getting along?"

"You really want to know?"

"Yes, really."

"He's different. I'm different. We're a lot different than we were a year ago." She looked at him hard, and he could see it there behind her eyes, waiting to pour out.

"Tell me," he said.

"Well, it's since the baby... . Alex, he's really good with the baby. The baby really got through to him, he's so good with his little son. It's like... he's really good when he has someone he doesn't have to reason with. He's so patient and kind with that little kid, it's really amazing."

"How about you, though?"

"Us? We get along. We don't even have to get along. We're stuck here in this dinky little house, but you wouldn't know it. He's got his little office here with the virching stuff and his university link, and I've got my net-rig in the back in the baby's room, and he does his thing, and I do my thing, and we do our together-thing, and it works out okay, it really does."

"What are you working on these days, exactly?"

"Net-stuff. The usual. Well, not the usual. Mommy net-stuff. The kind of stuff you can do with one hand, while you're wiping warm spit off your forearm." Jane laughed, and poked at her taco mix with a wooden spoon. "Anyway, that data we got-the stuff you recorded when the stream broke down on us? That made itqn three final release disks! We got money for-that. Pretty good money. We bought this house with it."

"Alex, this isn't a big house, I know that, but it's a stand-alone in a really prized area. I've even got a real garden in the backyard, you should see it. And you wouldn't believe the neighborhood politicals here in Austin, they are really fierce. You can walk to campus, and play with your kid right in the parks, anytime day or night, and it's a really pretty area, and it's really safe too. The crime rate is very low here, and you never see a structure hit, never. It's a real enclave here, it's a mega-good place for a little baby to live."

"Can I see the baby?"

"Oh! Sure! Let me turn this down."

She shut down the stove and led him into the back room. The nursery. The nursery was the first room in the house that actually struck him as a place where Juanita lived. The nursery looked like a room where an intelligent and hyperactive woman with design training had spent a long time thinking hard about exactly how things should look. It was like a big jewel box for a baby, it was like some monster bassinet in shades of fuzzy-cuddly midnight blue. It was the kind of room that created in Alex the instant urge to flee.

Juanita bent over the antique, hand-stripped, repainted wooden crib and looked in on her child. Alex had never seen quite that expression on her face before, but he recognized it. He recognized it as the place where all Juanita's raw ferocity had gone. All that steamy energy she'd always had, had been sucked into that all-encompassing Mado

She was actually talking baby talk to the infant. Genuine oogly-googly sounds without enough consonant8 m them. Then she lifted the child up in its little trailing baby dress and handed him over.

The kid's hairless little noggin was in a little gray skullcap, kind of like a stuffed baked mushroom. Alex was no co

"Gosh, he's really cute," Alex said. The child reacted with a fitful look and vigorous kicking. There was nothing wrong with the infant's legs. The kid had legs like a centaur.

"You can't believe it, can you?" Jane said, and smiled.

"No. Not really. I mean, not until now."

"Neither could I. I think of all the times I almost took that abortifacient thing, you know. I actually put that pill u~side my mouth once. I was go

"I 5CC."

"I love my baby, Alex. I don't just sort of love him, I really love my baby, I love him desperately, we both do. We dote on him. I want to have another baby."

"Really."

"Childbirth's not that bad. It's really interesting. I kind of liked childbirth actually. It felt really intense and important."

"I guess it would," Alex said. "I want Sylvia to see my nephew."

JANE FOLLOWED HER brother back to the living room. He carried the child as if Michael Gregory was a wet bag full of live frogs. The strange girl peeled her reptile gaze from the television, and her eyes shot from the baby, to Alex, to Jane, to the baby again, and then to Jane once more, with a look of such dark and curdled envy and hatred that Jane felt stu

"He's really cute," the girl said. "Thanks."

"That's a nice hat he's got too." "Thank you, Sylvia."

"That's okay." She started watching TV again.

Jane carried the baby back to the nursery and put him down. He'd just had his feeding. The baby was good about being handled. He liked to save his most energetic screamings for about 3 A.M.

"I guess her reaction seemed strange," Alex said. "But babies are kind of a fu

"She really wanted to see the baby, though. She said she did."

"It's okay. Sylvia is fine."

"Did you have the baby sca

"Alex..." She hesitated. "That's kind of an expensive proposition."

"Not for me. I know ways, I have contacts. Really, it's no problem; just slip me a little sample, you know, a frozen scraping off the inside of the cheek, we can get a genome rundown started right away, hit the high points, all the major fault centers. Reasonable rates. You really ought to have him sca

"We're not very lucky people, are we, Alex?"

"We're alive. That's lucky."

"We're not lucky, Alex. This is not a lucky time. We're alive, and I'm glad we're alive, but we're people of disaster. We'll never truly be happy or safe, never. Never, ever."

"No," he said. He drew a breath. A good, deep breath. "jane. I came here to Austin because I needed to tell you something. I wanted to thank you, Jane. Thank you for saving my life."

"De nada."

"No, Jane, it was a hit. You could have let me be, like I was telling you to do, and those quacks would have killed me in that black-market clinica. But you came after me, and you got me, and you even looked after me. And even though we were close to death, and surrounded by death, and we chased deadly things, we both came out alive. We're survivors, and look, there's another one of us now."

She grabbed his arm. "You want to tell me something, Alejandro? All right. Tell me something that I really want to hear." She tugged him to the side of the baby's crib. "Tell me that's your family, Alex. Tell me you'll help me look after him, like he was family."

"Sure he's family. He's my nephew. I'm proud of him."

"No, not that way. I mean the real way. I mean look after him, Alex, really care about him, like when I'm dead, and Jerry's dead, and this city is smashed, and everyone is sick and dying, and you don't even personally like him very much. But you still care anyway, and you still save him."

"Okay, Janey," Alex said slowly. "That's only fair. It's a bargain."

"No! Not a bargain, not a money thing, I don't want that from you or from anyone. I want a real promise from you, I want you to swear to me so that I'll never doubt you.