The Silent War

SEVEN MONTHS LATER HUMPHRIES MANSION

“How is she?” Martin Humphries asked, his voice tight with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension.

The holographic image of the obstetrician sitting calmly on a chair in front of Humphries’s desk looked relaxed, unruffled.

“It’s going to take another hour or so, Mr. Humphries,” she said. “Perhaps longer. The baby will arrive when he’s good and ready to enter the world.”

Humphries drummed his fingers on the desktop. First the brat is three weeks premature and now he’s taking his time about being born. “There’s nothing to do but wait,” the doctor warned. “Mrs. Humphries is pretty heavily sedated.”

“Sedated?” Humphries was instantly alarmed. “Why? By whose order? I wanted a natural childbirth. I told you—”

“Sir, she was sedated when your people wheeled her in here.”

“That’s impossible!”

The obstetrician shrugged inside her loose-fitting green surgical gown. “I was surprised, too.”

“I’m coming over,” Humphries snapped.

He clicked off the phone connection before the obstetrician could reply and pushed himself up from his desk chair. He had set up the birthing facility for Amanda down the hall from his office. He had no desire to be present during the mess and blood and pain of childbirth, but the obstetrician’s claim that Amanda was heavily sedated alarmed him. She was supposed to be off all the drugs. She promised me, Humphries reminded himself, anger rising inside him. She promised me to stay clean while she was carrying my son.

Humphries raced down the short corridor between his office and the birthing facility.

She’s been doing drugs again, he realized. I’ve had her detoxed three—no, four times, and she went right back onto them, pregnant or not. She doesn’t give a damn about my son, about me. Her and her damned habit. If she’s harmed my son I’ll kill her.

In his frenzy he forgot that Amanda was the only woman he had ever loved. After two earlier wives and no one knew how many other women, he had fallen truly in love with Amanda. But she never loved him. He knew that. She loved that bastard Fuchs, probably still does, he thought. She’s just having this baby to placate me. Fury boiling in him, he swore that if his son wasn’t perfect he’d have it terminated before it left the birthing room.

And her with it, Humphries snarled inwardly.

He banged through the door of the birthing facility, startling the green-gowned nurse sitting in the anteroom, her mask pulled down from her face, calmly reading from a palmcomp screen, a cup of coffee in her other hand.

The woman jumped to her feet, sloshing coffee onto the carpeted floor. “Mr. Humphries!”

He strode past her.

“I wouldn’t go in there, sir. There’s nothing—”

Humphries ignored her and pushed through the door to the birthing room. Amanda lay on the bed, unconscious or asleep, soaked with perspiration, pale as death. Three women in green surgical gowns and masks stood to one side of the bed. Humphries saw that Amanda wore not a trace of makeup. Her china-blue eyes were closed, her lustrous blonde hair matted with sweat. And still she looked so beautiful, so vulnerable, like a golden princess from a fairy tale. His anger melted.

One of the women came up before him, burly, square-shouldered, blocking his view of his wife. “You’re not gowned!” she hissed from behind her mask.

Fuming, Humphries went out to the anteroom and demanded that the nurse out there find him a surgical gown and mask. In less than five minutes he was dressed, with plastic booties over his shoes, a mask, gloves, and a ridiculous cap pulled down over his ears.

He went back into the birthing room. It was ominously quiet. Amanda had not moved. The only sound in the room was the slow clicking of one of the monitors clustered around the head of the bed. Humphries stared at the machines. The clicking seemed to be coming from the heart monitor, counting off Amanda’s heartbeats. It sounded terribly slow.

“Well,” he whispered to the obstetrician, “how is she doing?”

The woman drew in a breath, then replied, “There are some complications.”

“Complications?”

“Her heart. The strain of labor has placed an unusually severe workload on her heart.”

“Her heart?” Humphries snapped. Pointing a finger like a pistol at the cardiologist, he demanded, “What about the auxiliary pump?”

“It’s doing its job,” the cardiologist said firmly. “But there’s a limit to how much workload it can carry.”

“Will she be all right? Will she get through this all right?” The obstetrician looked away from him.

He grabbed her shoulder. “My son. Is he all right?”

She looked back at him, but her eyes wavered. “The baby will be fine, Mr. Humphries. Once we get him out of his mother.”

Humphries suddenly understood. She’s going to die. Amanda’s going to die! The only woman I’ve ever loved in my whole life is going to die giving birth to my son.

His knees gave way. He almost collapsed, but the same burly medic who had pushed him out of the room now grasped his arm in a powerful grip and held him on his feet.

“We’re doing everything we can,” the obstetrician said as the medic walked Humphries through the door and deposited him on a chair in the anteroom. The nurse out there sprang to her feet again.

Humphries slumped down onto the chair, barely hearing the whispered words between the nurse and medic. The nurse put a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. He ostentatiously poured it onto the carpeting. She looked surprised, then backed away and remained standing by the door to the birthing room. Humphries sat there, his thoughts darker and darker with each passing moment.

Fuchs. He’s the cause of all this. This is all his fault. She still loves him. She’s only having this baby to keep me happy, to save his putrid ass. Well, if she dies then all my promises are finished. I’ll find that sonofabitch and kill him. I’ll get Harbin and every ship I’ve got out there in the Belt to hunt him down and kill him. I don’t care if it takes a thousand ships, I’ll see him dead. I’ll have him skinned alive. I’ll have his balls roasted over a slow fire. I’ll—

The squall of a baby’s first cry stopped his litany of rage.

Humphries shot to his feet. The nurse was still standing in front of the door.

Which opened slowly. The obstetrician came out, pulling the mask off her face. She looked tired.

“My son?” Humphries demanded.

“The boy’s fine,” said the woman, unsmiling. “We’ll run him through the usual tests in a day or so, but he appears to be normal. A little scrawny, but that’s not unusual for a preemie.”

Scrawny, Humphries thought. But he’ll be all right. He’ll grow. He’ll be a healthy son.

“Your wife…” the obstetrician murmured.

“Is she all right?”

The doctor shook her head slowly.

“Amanda?”

“I’m afraid she didn’t make it, sir. Her heart stopped and we couldn’t revive her.”

Humphries gaped at the woman. “She’s dead? Amanda’s dead?”

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Humphries,” the obstetrician said, her eyes avoiding his. “We did everything that’s humanly possible.”

“He killed her,” Humphries muttered. “The bastard killed her.”

“It’s not the baby’s fault,” said the obstetrician, looking alarmed.

“He killed her,” Humphries repeated.