Invaded (Alienated, #2)(27)
Oh, gross. Cara did not need that visual.
Poor Elle looked ready to hurl, despite her medical background. Her new position as Constant Alibi meant she accompanied Cara everywhere, even to the bathroom for midnight pit stops. But diaper inspection was above and beyond the call of duty.
“Sorry to get you dragged into this,” Cara said, stripping the baby’s clothes.
“Not a problem.” Elle dipped the collector tool into the baby’s diaper. “I needed a rotation in the nursery to complete my medical training.” She grimaced while sliding a cap over her sample. “I couldn’t avoid it forever.”
“Not a fan of kids, huh?”
Elle lifted the baby to the nearby basin and tapped a foot pedal to fill the sink with warm water. “I don’t dislike younglings. I simply have no experience with them.”
“None?” Cara removed the boy’s dirty sheets and dropped them in the sonic purifier bin. “You never had to babysit?”
Elle laughed, though Cara didn’t see what was funny. “Not everyone is suited to work with small children.”
Well, sure. Kids were annoying, but if L’eihrs wanted to imitate the human method of reproduction, they needed to learn to care for their young. “Aren’t they shutting down the artificial wombs?” Cara asked.
“Our geneticists disabled the wombs months ago.” Elle dodged splashes while she washed the baby with all the confidence of a pig at a bacon festival. “Haven’t you noticed the absence of newborns?”
“Here, let me.” Using her hip, Cara nudged Elle aside and finished the job. “So there won’t be any more babies soon? Won’t that create a weird generation gap?”
“Not really.” Elle opened her medic bag and inserted the spoon tool into a testing device, then sanitized her hands. “The oldest clones are nearly twenty. Next year they’ll leave the Aegis for their designated work dormitories, and when they find approved l’ihans, we’ll deactivate their fertility suppressants.”
Cara grabbed a towel from beneath the sink. “What suppressants?”
“The nano-chip beneath your wrist,” Elle explained, “also halts your ovulation. When you’re approved to breed, I’ll scan your wrist and reverse the settings.”
Approved to breed? What was she, a prize heifer? “What if I don’t want kids?”
Elle handed over a cloth diaper and wrinkled her brow. “Why wouldn’t you want to pass on your gifts? Once the child is born, you won’t be burdened with it.”
Cara had to focus on diapering the baby before he got sick again, but as soon as she secured his hind end, she held him close and whirled to face Elle. “Are you telling me nothing will change—you’ll pop out your spawn, then hand them over to the Aegis?”
Elle drew back, lips parting in offense. “You make it sound so sinister. I enjoyed growing up in this Aegis with my peers. I never felt deprived of anything.” She patted the baby clutched in Cara’s arms. “If you wish to house your offspring, perhaps you’ll be permitted to do so on the colony. I’ve heard they hope to model a more humanistic lifestyle there.”
Cara relaxed her death grip on the infant and shuffled to the changing station to dress him. So, assuming she decided to have kids, and assuming The Way approved her request to “breed,” she might be allowed to keep her children? That was twisted, no matter how Elle tried to spin it.
A small voice whispered, Maybe Troy’s right. Maybe you don’t belong here, but she shook that thought out of her head. It didn’t matter—she probably wasn’t having kids anyway.
Elle read the results of her test sample and smiled. “Excellent news, it’s a food-borne illness.” She ruffled the infant’s hair and told Cara, “You dress him and replenish his electrolytes while I alert the nursery kitchen staff.” Then she violated the Constant Alibi rule by leaving the room.
“That’s all right,” Cara said to the nearly naked bundle in her arms. “I can go ten minutes without getting in trouble.” She stroked his soft, chubby cheek with one finger. “Can’t I, little guy?”
He responded by vomiting down the front of her tunic.
Soft laughter sounded from nearby, and the head caretaker hurried over to take the baby. The woman’s face was heavily lined but gentle, her smile a beacon of sunshine in an otherwise bleak afternoon. Unlike most of the older generation, she had life in her eyes, that spark the others had lost. She reminded Cara of her late Grammy O’Shea, so from that moment, Cara dubbed the woman Gram.
“You’re not a real caretaker until you’ve been christened in this way,” Gram said in a thick accent. With a gentle hand, she pushed Cara toward the hall. “You’ll find clean tunics in the washroom.”
When Cara had wiped down her chest with a damp cloth and changed clothes, she returned to the nursery. She scanned the vast room for Gram, beginning with the transparent cribs, pressed flush against one another with see-through dividers so the babies could socialize. From there, she turned her gaze to the various stations—specialized places for feeding, changing, bathing, intellectual stimulation, open play, and even physical contact. Centuries of research had taught L’eihrs the precise amount of touch a child needed to maximize brain development, and caretakers didn’t dole out a minute longer than necessary.