Only Begotten Daughter Read Online Free Page B

wanted to be with it for a while. This time they’ve got a human embryo inside. The egg’s a mystery, but the seed came from me. Inverse partheno … you know.”
    “You’re Katz, aren’t you?” That wink again, mischievous, subversive, followed by a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. “Quite a dilemma, huh? Know what I’d do in your socks, Mr. Katz? I’d pick up this womb and walk out the front door.”
    “You mean—take it home?”
    “It’s not their inverse parthenogenesis, buddy. It’s yours. ”
    Murray shook his head dolefully. “They’d guess right away who stole it.”
    “Stole it? Let’s work on our vocabulary, man. You’re borrowing it. For nine months, period. Don’t worry, nobody’ll take it away from you.” Marcus Bass gesticulated as if setting up his words on a movie marquee. “‘Sperm Bank Seizes Dad’s Embryo.’ Frostig would kill to avoid that kind of publicity. He’d kill. ”
    Heartburn seared Murray’s chest cavity. Sperm bank seizes dad’s embryo: he could actually get away with it.
    Assuming he wanted to …
    “Thing is, Dr. Bass, I’m not sure I—”
    “Not sure you want to be a pop?”
    Had Marcus Bass used a different word— father or dad —Murray would not have been moved. “With inverse parthenogenesis, there’s no mother,” said Murray. Till the day he died, Phil Katz was Pop. “I’d have to do everything myself.”
    “I’ll tell you my personal experience. Before it actually happens, you never realize being a pop is what you always wanted.” Marcus Bass pulled out his wallet and unsnapped the fanfold photographs. Four small grinning faces tumbled into view. “A little boy is the greatest thing in the world. Alex, Henry, Ray, and Marcus Junior. They can all swim.”
    “These ectogenesis machines, are they hard to operate?”
    Dropping to his knees, Marcus Bass caressed the pump. “See this cardiovascular device here? Make sure it stays connected to the battery. Ordinary room air oxygenates the blood, so keep the entire unit in a warm, well-ventilated place, and don’t let anything block this intake valve.”
    “Right. Lots of air.”
    “Every thirty days these liquids should be replenished. This bottle takes regular infant formula, but for this one you need whole blood.”
    “Blood? Where do I get that? ”
    “Where do you think?” Gently Marcus Bass punched Murray’s arm. “From the father, that’s where. Just hang around your local fire station—make friends with the paramedics, okay? When the time comes, slip ’em a twenty and they’ll gladly stick their transfusion needle in you.”
    “Fire station. Right. Transfusion needle.”
    “This third bottle receives waste products and should be flushed clean when full. Baby’s first dirty diaper, kind of …”
    “Regular infant formula—that something I get from a hospital?”
    “Hospital? No man, the supermarket. I prefer Similac.” Marcus Bass tickled the glass womb with a kitchy-koo finger. “You mix it with water.”
    Murray joined Marcus Bass on the floor. “Similac … how much water?”
    “Just read the can.”
    “It comes in a can?” How convenient.
    “Uh-huh. A girl, isn’t she?”
    “So they tell me.”
    “Congratulations. I imagine girls are the greatest thing in the world too.”
    When Dr. Bass smiled, Murray had a sudden flash of a two-year-old sitting astride her pop, the horse.
    The Reverend Billy Milk, chief pastor of the First Ocean City Church of Saint John’s Vision, reached inside his sheepskin coat and caressed his steel detonator. God’s wrath was sticky and cold, like an ice-cube tray just removed from the freezer.
    Dusk washed across the Institute grounds, bleeding the colors from his flock’s protest signs, turning them from angry shouts into moans of discontent. A soft rain fell. Billy looked at his watch. Five o’clock: the demonstration permit had expired. He nodded to his acolyte, Wayne Ackerman the insurance wizard, who in turn signaled the