Glasshouse - Charles Stross [68]
“Champagne,” Alice says, a little apologetically. “Fizzy wine.”
“I wouldn’t say no.” Angel holds out a fluted glass while Jen picks up the bottle and pours.
“Why, is there something in particular to celebrate?” Jen and Angel don’t normally do their drinking before sunset. So I figure it must be good.
“Well.” Jen’s eye sparkles wickedly. “You might think it was something to do with your correcting your last social shortcoming at long last.” I feel my face heating. “But that’s not it.” Bitch. “It’s just that this is Alice’s last drink for some time.”
“Excuse me?” I say, unsure what’s going on.
“About eight months to go,” Alice says, dabbing at her lips with a napkin. Her eyes flicker from me to Jen and back again, as if looking for an offer of help.
“I—” I stop. Lick my lips. “You’re pregnant?”
“Yes.” Alice nods, a quick up and down. She doesn’t look happy. Jen, however, looks ecstatic.
“Here’s to Alice and her baby!” She raises a glass of bubbly, and I echo the gesture because it would be rude not to, but as I take a mouthful of the sweet, fizzy wine I catch Alice’s eye, and it’s like there’s a static discharge—I can see exactly what she’s thinking.
“To your very good health,” I tell her over the rim of my glass, and I’m pretty sure she gets the unspoken message because her shoulders slump slightly, and she takes a small sip from her own glass. I look at Jen. “And you?” I ask, before I can apply the brakes to my motor mouth.
Jen doesn’t crack a smile. “Shouldn’t be too long now,” she remarks, calmly enough. “Then you can buy me a bottle of champagne too, eh?”
I manage to summon up the ghost of a grin from somewhere. “You must want a baby badly.”
“Of course! And I’m not just going to stop at one.” Jen smiles at me sympathetically. “Of course, I heard all about your job. It must be very difficult.”
“It’s not so bad,” I manage, before retreating into the glass. Bitch. “You know Janis is pregnant, too?” I’ll bet you do. “I’m training to be her replacement.” What is this, let’s all overload the life-support system week? “It’s going to mean more work for the rest of us.”
“Oh, you’ll be next,” Jen says, with a casual, airy certainty that makes my blood run cold. “You’ll see things differently when you’ve got one of your own. I say, waiter! Waiter! Where’s our menu?”
9
Secret
TIME passes fast, mostly because I spend the afternoon with my nose buried in the encyclopedia, trying to remedy my desperate ignorance of dark ages reproductive politics. Which I sense is putting me at a dangerous disadvantage.
The next day is the first of four days off. I sleep until well after Sam’s departed for the office. Then I go downstairs and work out. Of the nine other houses on our stretch of road, one is now occupied by Nicky and Wolf—but Wolf has a job and Nicky, who is lazy beyond my wildest aspirations, sleeps in until noon. So I get in a good hour-long run, by the end of which I’m sweated up but not breathless or aching anymore. It’s spring in our biome, and the trees and flowers are beginning to blossom. The air is full of the airborne seminiferous dust shed by the hermaphroditic vegetation. It tickles my nose, making me sneeze, but some of the scents that accompany it—attractants for insects—are nice.
After exercise I shower, dress in respectable clothes, and head downtown to the hardware store to spend some of my money. I feel better about spending it, knowing it’s not Sam’s money, even though I realize this is stupid because it’s just meaningless scrip issued to keep the experiment working, not real currency. I come away from the store with a brazing torch, flux, solder, lots and lots of copper wire, and some other odds and ends. Then I go shopping for domestic items.
I hit the drugstore first, armed with a shopping list of things I’d never heard of until yesterday—things the encyclopedia listed under sexual health. Unfortunately, just knowing what to ask for doesn’t translate into being able to buy it, and I gradually figure out that the omissions make a pattern. I can understand them