Busted Flush by George R. R. Martin Page A

on her waist, strong fingers wrapping around her hips. He never touched her stomach, or her back, or her breasts. She wanted his arms around her, but resigned herself to holding his shoulders. His fingertips dimpled her flesh as they found a rhythm.
    Her tail convulsed. Niobe groaned. The ovipositor widened for peristalsis with a tearing pain that robbed her of breath. The first egg in a clutch was always the worst.
    Christian finished with a little convulsion of his own, but not before she was already climbing down. She wanted to hide behind the privacy screen, but Pendergast and the others were adamant about recording every detail of the birth process. At least the sheets made a passable toga; Niobe had a lot of practice.
    Christian rolled off the bed. He pulled his boxers on.
    The first egg formed at the base of her tail. Through clenched teeth, she said, “Won’t you . . . unhhh . . . stay?”
    He pulled his shirt back over his head. “What?”
    “Don’t you want to”—another burst of pain as the first egg passed midway along her tail and the second formed—“meet the little ones?”
    “Can’t. Docs gotta examine me.” Christian combed his hair in the mirror. “I’ve explained this before.”
    She wondered why they couldn’t examine him
before
each session, but couldn’t catch her breath enough to ask. The tip of her tail tore open to pass a sticky, pineapple-sized egg. She deposited it in the square marked on the floor, where the cameras on the other side of the wall and in the ceiling could film the hatching from multiple angles.
    Christian opened the door.
    “Maybe you could come by and see them later?”
    “Maybe,” he said. And then he was gone.
    Niobe dressed while the trio of eggs wobbled, shuddered, and expanded. The first disintegrated with a little
pop
, overlaying a talcum-powder smellon the odors of antiseptic and sex. In its place stood a three-foot-tall homunculus: stocky, bald, but with a bushy, fiery red beard.
    He rubbed his scalp and looked around the room with wide, coal-colored eyes. “Mommy?”
    Niobe smiled. She opened her arms. “C’mere, Yves.”
    They hugged, her son strong and healthy in her arms. She tried not to dwell on that. He felt the twinge through their bond, though, and said, “Look what I can do!”
    He ran up the wall on two feet. She watched him dance upside down on the ceiling while the second egg hatched.
    Yvette was tall and lithe—or would have been, were she of normal size—with waist-length auburn hair, sharp cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes. Stunning.
    Thanks, Momma
. The girl kissed Niobe on the cheek, then settled in her lap. She smelled like summer rain.
    “Mom!” Yves kept dancing overhead. He moved on to an Irish jig, complaining, “Mom, you’re not LOOK-ing!”
    “That’s fantastic, kiddo! We should sign you up for Riverdance.” Better yet, Niobe imagined, a trip to Ireland.
    The third hatchling, Yectli, had pale, nearly translucent skin, a shock of white hair, and eyes like the wide, bright New Mexico sky. Albinism as a mild form of jokerism? The kid got off lucky.
    “Better than that, even,” he said, reading her thoughts. He swelled his chest and cocked a thumb at himself. “Watch what
I
can do.”
    Yectli turned toward the mirror and held his arms out. Ten little lightning bolts crackled from his fingertips to the mirror. Through the wall Niobe heard a crash, then somebody yelling for a fire extinguisher.
    “I did it for you, Mom,” said Yectli. “I zapped that camera good!”
    The room smelled like ozone.
     

     
    Drake was securely belted into a helicopter seat with a soldier on either side of him. This was so nuts it almost made him laugh, but he was too miserable for that. He wondered why he needed to go someplace else in the first place. The doctors and soldiers scared him, but he wasn’t going to show it. And he wasn’t going to let them make him cry.
    The helicopter was flying over desert scrub and they were headed