A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) Read Online Free Page B

after a few moments of pacing, I decide to sit.
    I’m not sure how long I’m sitting there—five minutes? ten?—when I hear the door sensor beep and the locking mechanism disengage. The door slides open, and in steps Byron, carrying something in his arms.
    “I thought you might want a little company,” he says. I look down at the bundle he’s balancing so delicately in the crook of his elbow.
    He is cradling my baby.
    The Goober is tiny and pink and wrinkly, cooing softly as Byron bobs her gently up and down.
    “We’ve made arrangements for your journey,” he tells me as he nears with my daughter. “You’ll leave on the Fountain . It will only take a few hours to get to the continent, although from there I’m afraid you’ll have to travel by dogsled. Technology is great, but it can’t trump Mother Nature.Still, it’s a relatively easy journey, at least to the base.”
    But I’m hardly listening. In the instant he hands me the Goober, the whole world seems to drop away.
    I am a mother.
    This wrinkled pink raisin is my daughter.
    She finally opens her eyes, and blinks up at me, and that’s when I start to cry. Huge, blubbering sobs. Worse than when Christian was killed off in season three of Martian Law .
    Byron takes in the scene quietly. Almost as if he were ashamed. I can only hope.
    “I never did ask,” he asks softly. “What are you going to name her?”
    I rub my daughter’s left cheek, where, curiously, her constellation of freckles seems ten times lighter than the last time I saw her. “Olivia,” I say through my sobs. I hold her close, feeling the rise and fall of her perfect, tiny breaths. “After my mother. Her name is Olivia.”

Chapter Two
In Which Ducky Barfs For Hours
    Grown men—even ones who, like my father, have difficult jobs to which they wear a suit and tie every day, and know how to use big words like “hypnagogic” in a sentence, and have even, perhaps, raised children of their own—might be forgiven for breaking down and weeping at the sight of their brand-new grandbaby, cradled in a daughter’s arms. You might even expect that such an event would cause tears—giddiness, even. Perhaps the grandfather in question might go so far as to tuck his legs up underneath him in his chair and clap his hands together like a kindergartner who’s imbibed too much orange drink.
    My father is currently doing all of these things. But it is not because of little baby Olivia. Oh, he likes her fine. He said she’s “adorable,” even, and “a miracle,” and he did spend a good amount of time cuddling with her when we first got on the mag rail.
    But the thing that’s actually making my father squeal like a preteen who just got Hansel Wintergarden’s autograph is, in fact, our means of transport.
    “You’d never even suspect how fast we were moving if you didn’t know it!” he gushes, pressing his nose against the window. “It’s smoother than the SleekTransit mag line, by far. Such a marvel of engineering. Wouldn’t you agree, Donald?”
    Next to my father, Ducky has turned a shade of pea-soup green that is such an exact match to the train’s upholstery that I could have sworn the designers used his face as a color swatch. “Yeah,” he moans. “A marvel.” The Duck, clearly, was not built for high-speed travel.
    Neither, apparently, is little Olivia, who is enjoying the ride about as much as having knitting needles crammed into her ears. She’s wailing a piercing wail, and doing the baby equivalent of the Electric Slide up and down my chest.
    “I think we’re going to be docking with the space elevator soon,” my dad gushes on. “Oh, wait until you see it, Elvie. Did I already mention it’s a marvel? A marvel ! And to call it the Fountain ? Ha, let it not be said these Almiri gents lack for sense of humor.”
    “I think you’re forgetting that this marvelous space elevator is taking us to a prison in Antarctica,” I mutter, bobbing Olivia in a futile attempt to get