Cosmocopia (13 page)

And then, as if the despair itself had provided the missing essential strong flavor of her request, the ghost began to descend upon her.

All the other frightened séance-goers scurried away from the ghost’s target, tripping and falling over each other in their haste to vacate a circle of space around Crutchsump. Even Lazorg, despite his fine bold talk in Palisander’s, reacted at first with mindless fear.

In a moment, Crutchsump was completely enveloped in ghost flesh.

The cool tissues of the hollowed-out ghost allowed her to breathe, but tinted her vision in rainbow hues. She felt enwrapped in a sentient fog that permeated her every fiber. She witnessed all the fellow guests recoiling from her. Lazorg, recovering his nerve, extended a sympathetic arm toward her, but was pulled back by others.

Her envelopment seemed to last forever. Crutchsump could feel changes within her.

Then the ghost was gone, retreating skyward.

Crutchsump staggered. Lazorg shook off the cautious hands and raced to her side, catching her before she could fall.

“Lazorg—please—take me home—”

Serrapane radiated irritation. “Go! The séance is over. Activate the traps once more!”

In the carriage, huddled in Lazorg’s arms, Crutchsump began to regain her strength and confidence. She knew her wish had been granted.

Once home, she fell with fervid desire upon Lazorg. She ripped off her caul, burst the snaps of his pants, worked his alien sex rigorously with her hands until he was soon erect, and then socketed him down the wet channel of her introciptor.

He burst inside her with a howl, spraying his seed deep within her womb.

Her womb. Infertile for the past year when receiving the seed of this monster from another plane.

But no longer.

9. Father and Slug

CRUTCHSUMP PAUSED OUTSIDE THE door to the chirurgeon’s office in Humble Alley, her hand on the brass latch, undecided.

Despite the warmth of the day, a long blue swallow-silk scarf enwrapped her neck, from collarbones up to just beneath her jaw.

Pedestrians passed by without paying any particular notice to her hesitancy. A blood-linnet landed on a ledge and began to sing its curdled song. Two suns shone down merrily, as if intent on illuminating only paradisiacal scenes.

Did she want to spoil the immense happiness she had experienced over the past three months since the evening of the séance? Her gravid days and nights spent managing her household, companioning an unsuspecting Lazorg at his work, and cultivating her surprise inside herself had been a timeless vista of contentment, pride, and expectation for even greater future happiness. She knew her courting and acceptance of the ghost had been the lone and best way of cementing her relationship with Lazorg, of ensuring that he remained forever hers. Still, a small doubt troubled her. Had there been any selfishness in her actions? What if Lazorg didn’t belong with her? What if Serrapane could provide better for him, make him happier?

No! Since that day she had rescued the unloved, troubled monster from the Shulgin Mudflats, their fates had been linked. No one could be allowed to intervene between them. The new life being nurtured within her womb would be the final capstone to their relationship.

But her condition had become so troubling of late. Not normal. And if anything should go really wrong, Lazorg would be deeply impacted. After all, it was his child as well as hers. …

A small stabbing pain behind her eyes interrupted Crutchsump’s deliberations, settling the issue once and for all.

Pressing the handle of the latch down, she entered the chirurgeon’s office.

Moffoletto had been recommended to Crutchsump by Linosariat, the wife of one of Lazorg’s clients. Linosariat had always been one of the few among the rich and mighty who treated Crutchsump with respect and genuine fellow-feeling.

“He’s very discrete,” the other woman said. “Gentle and quite expert. His services aren’t cheap, you understand, but you can rely on him absolutely.”

Moffoletto’s elegant office bespoke his stature, outfitted tastefully with and fine furniture and ideations (but none originating with Lazorg, Crutchsump noted critically). Even the examining table resembled a luxurious couch rather than a clinical apparatus, despite the halo frame at its head.

Moffoletto sat behind his desk. Beneath his plain professional’s caul, his unusually small introciptor rendered him male vis-à-vis most everyone else he might meet, and Crutchsump felt an instinctive trust toward him.

“Welcome,” said the chirurgeon. “You are Crutchsump?”

“Yes. Thank you for making time to see me.”

“This is my work. Now, what seems to be the problem?”

“My—my pregnancy. Within the past few weeks, it seems to have gone wrong somehow.”

“Off with that scarf, please, and your caul as well.”

Crutchsump unwound the scarf reluctantly, revealing her irregularly swollen neck. No pregnancy she had ever seen had ever resulted in this degree of engorgement. She took off her caul next, and her introciptor showed distended and tight-skinned.

Moffoletto came to her and began gently to palpitate her face and neck and organ.

“Does this hurt?”

“Not really. But I do have some small pains—inside me.”

“Come to the couch, please.”

Once stretched out, with her head immobilized in the rigid halo frame, Crutchsump could only stare at the ceiling, while Moffoletto busied himself elsewhere. But he soon returned to her field of vision, bearing a small ceramic lidded container. From within the container he withdrew a mucousy flatworm.

“The harmless planarian will travel down your birth canal and trace the outlines of your womb, all without disturbing the fetus. When it emerges, it will convey the memorized information to me by replicating its uterine path in a bowl filled with a livewater tracing medium. Do you understand?”

Crutchsump felt scared, but tried not to show her feelings. “Yes—yes, I understand. What do I have to do?”

“Nothing. Simply try to relax.”

Moffoletto introduced the small planarian into the opening of her introciptor. There was no sexual thrill involved, given the implications of the examination, just an odd interior tickling which ceased when the worm passed deeper within.

Crutchsump waited patiently for minutes, her mind blank of either hope or fear.

Moffoletto produced a small cube of aromatic herbs and touched it to the opening of her introciptor.

“This is the cue for our little friend to make his exit.”

A short time thereafter, the worm emerged from Crutchsump. Moffoletto handled it tenderly and stepped away. Crutchsump heard the planarian plop into liquid. Moffoletto returned and freed her. She redonned her caul and scarf.

Using its cilia to swim about, the worm was carving stable lines in the transparent liquid, lines that glowed enduringly white.

Soon the deep glass bowl contained an intricate three-dimensional representation of Crutchsump’s charted interior.

Moffoletto studied the liquid schematic from every angle. Crutchsump wanted to question him, but remained silent.

At last he ceased his examination, and returned to his seat behind his desk. Crutchsump took a seat as well.

“Are you prepared? The news is not good. This pregnancy is like none I have ever seen. The fetus is excessively large, much bigger than the typical fingerling that can be easily accommodated by the sinusoid womb. As a result, your womb has thrust out extra lymphatic extensions for support. That explains your neck swelling.”

Crutchsump felt tentative relief. “That’s not so bad then …”

“No. But the other developments are. The grasping womb is impinging on various arteries and veins. And it is even trespassing on your brain. These irruptions are the source of your internal distress, and they are bound to get worse. I am afraid that if you do not terminate this pregnancy, your life will be in danger. Even if you carry to term, the delivery will be inescapably traumatic.”

Crutchsump’s mind went blank for an eternal moment. But then she was filled with a serene certainty.

“That’s impossible. I must have this child. Too much depends on it.”

Moffoletto was taken aback. “But your health, your very life—”

“I am doing what I want with my life, what has to be done.”

Standing, Crutchsump said, “If you could help with the birth, I’d be very appreciative. Now, how much do I owe you for today?”

The hour was past ten o’clock at night. Lazorg had not attended dinner at home with Crutchsump—no entertaining was scheduled this evening—being busy in his studio for many hours, and she had eaten alone, meditating as positively as possible on the day’s bad news. But Crutchsump had kept a plate warm for the artist atop the stove. She sat now in the kitchen, awaiting his hungry arrival.

She could hear him now tromping down the hall, muttering to himself.

“Pull smarter—smarter, not harder. …”

He entered the kitchen and was taken aback at Crutchsump’s presence.

“I thought you’d be asleep.”

“No, dear, I was waiting for you. We have to talk.”

“Talk? About what? Have the household expenses gone up again? I can afford to give you more money, you know. Just ask. You shouldn’t have to stint. Those days are over forever.”

“No, nothing like that. It’s this.”

Crutchsump undid her scarf. Lazorg jumped. They had not been intimate for weeks, and he was seeing her disfiguration for the first time.

“What—what is it? What’s happened to you?”

For one brief moment, Crutchsump wanted to accuse, to say,
If you had paid more attention to me of late, you’d already know.
But then affection supplanted recrimination. She explained everything, calmly, all secrets revealed.

Lazorg dropped down heavily into a chair. “But this—this is a tragedy. You can’t go on with the pregnancy. It’s absurd. I don’t want to lose you for some—some monster child!”

“Our child won’t be a monster. He’ll be ours, the symbol of our linked destinies. I believe this is what the ghost referred to, when he said the future would contain ‘marvels and illuminations.’ Our child will astonish the world.”

Lazorg jumped up. “No! I won’t let you!”

“You can’t stop me. It’s my choice, my body, my sacrifice.”

Lazorg looked at her imploringly, then rushed from the room, overcome by his emotions.

Crutchsump picked up his plate of food and followed him.

He would need to keep up his strength to be a good father.

That night in bed, Lazorg held Crutchsump tightly, and they wept together.

The full term for a pregnancy was, of course, four months. And the final month after Crutchsump’s visit to the chirurgeon passed all too quickly.

Lazorg had insisted on further immediate medical consultations, once he knew the truth. Various high-priced experts were brought onto the case, but all eventually concurred with Moffoletto’s initial diagnosis: the invasive womb and its unseen occupant’s metabolism were now too intricately entwined with Crutchsump’s physiology to permit severing. Any attempt at excision would be fatal to the mother, as fatal as giving birth would be. But allowing the fetus to mature would at least preserve one life out of the inexorably linked pairing of mother and child.

Crutchsump had accepted the latest findings calmly. Nothing she heard changed her certitude about the rightness of her actions. She felt radiant, blessed.

Lazorg, however, raged like a madman in the privacy of their home.

“It’s not fair! Not fair to anyone! I lost my woman once already, paid the highest price! Why again! Why me!”

He berated himself for infidelity.

“If only I hadn’t frightened you with my attentions to Serrapane. None of this would have happened! How I detest her now!”

Crutchsump said nothing, but was quietly pleased.

The artist was not totally egocentric, though.

“You don’t deserve this, Moley! Not at all. You saved me when I was lost and friendless, and this is your reward. It’s too cruel, too mean! Just when we had a good life together, after all your suffering in poverty. Why? Why! Maybe you’re just too fine for this world. That’s how it often worked in mine.”

Crutchsump would hold Lazorg’s hand and stroke his arm, or his naked face. “No one’s to blame, Lazorg. We fashion our own destinies. I invited the ghost to descend on me. I alone am to blame, if there is any blame at all. You never thought you could impregnate me after a barren year. And no one knew our child would be so vigorous in the womb. But that’s all good! He’ll be a sturdy youth.”

Lazorg failed to take solace from this line of reasoning.

The only time he troubled Crutchsump was when he delved into blasphemy.

“I curse the Conceptus! Goddamn him! Worm in the rose, he is! Hiding at the nub of creation. All this is his fault! He made the universe, he sent the ghost. I hold him responsible, for all our suffering! If I could, I’d kill him!”

“No, no, Lazorg, you mustn’t say that. Promise me you’ll forget such thoughts. They do you no honor.”

But Lazorg would make no such promise.

In the final week of her fourth month, her neck and introciptor grossly enlarged and “teratological,” according to Moffoletto, Crutchsump had to take permanently to bed.

She had a momentary pang about her appearance. She had never been a beauty like Serrapane, but her average features had been familiar and attractive enough to satisfy herself. But when she weighed the loss of her modest beauty against the nurturing of her child, she didn’t really mind. And Lazorg did not seem to be repulsed.

(Were all the inhabitants of this plane, she wondered, still so alien to him that even major abnormalities were elided in his vision?)

Pirkle responded to his mistress’s dilemma with utmost devotion. He climbed into bed with her and simply refused to leave, except to deposit his scat lozenges in a nearby sand box. He began to emit a constant, plangent, wavering, almost subliminal drone that had a soothing effect on all who heard it.

Crutchsump remained fairly robust physically. But her mind was going, as the rogue womb expanded inward into her brain.

Her powers of speech left her before her rationality departed, trapping her in noncommunicativeness. But she didn’t really mind, as she was still able to clutch Lazorg’s hand as he sat for hours beside her, and she could still listen to his voice, even if she didn’t always comprehend him anymore.