"And I ran it myself every day for over a week. That's one of my jobs in the lab and it was easy to slip in another specimen. And it didn't, and it didn't and I went nearly out of my mind—"
"Every time Hal entered the apartment, I'd look at him and he'd shake his head," Lucy interrupted. "It meant everything to him. And it would just have broken my heart—"
"Mine, too," Bet said softly. "And his. And today was the last chance. I was scared to try it. This afternoon at 14:30, just before the farewell visits, was the deadline for viz messages to any of them. If I'd had to send mine without the word we'd agreed on that would tell him it was all right—But it was, at last! And now he knows, even if I never—even if we never—Excuse me, please, it's been a strain. I'm afraid I'm going to bawl."
We let her alone. Kids nowadays hate to be fussed over.
Us, we'd lost our son, and that was going to stay with us forever. But now we would have his child to love and—
An appalling thought struck me suddenly. I can't imagine why I hadn't realized it sooner. All this emotion, I suppose.
"Good God!" I cried. "An illegal child! We can't keep it!"
"Nobody's going to know," Lucy replied calmly. "Bet's going to live with us, and when it starts to show, she's going to take her allowed leave. We'll take ours, too, and we'll all go on a trip—to Mars, maybe, or Venus—one of the settled colonies where we can rent a house. Babies don't have to be born in hospitals, you know; our ancestors had them right at home. She's strong and healthy and I know what to do. Then we'll come back here and we'll have a baby with us that we adopted wherever we were. Nobody will ever know."
"Look," I said in a voice I tried to keep from rising. "There are four billion people on Earth and about 28 billion in the colonized Solar planets. Every one of those people is on record at Central Cybernetics. How do you suppose you're going to get away with the phony adoption of a non-existent child? The first time you have to take it to a baby clinic, they'll find it has no card."