Not going to take long, she thought in a voice that was part Susannah and part Detta. No ma’am. This chap comin in on the express train!

But then the pain let up slightly. She snatched the extinguisher off the wall when it did, trained the slim black horn on the flaming control panel, and pressed the trigger. Foam billowed out, coating the flames. There was a baleful hissing sound and a smell like burning hair.

“THE FIRE … IS OUT,” the Voice of the Dogan proclaimed. “THE FIRE … IS OUT.” And then changing, quick as a flash, to a plummy British Lord Haw-Haw accent:

“I SAY, JOLLY GOOD SHOW, SEW-ZANNAH, AB-SOLUTELY BRILLLL-IANT!”

She lurched across the minefield of the Dogan’s floor again, seized the microphone, and pressed the transmit toggle. Above her, on one of the TV screens still operating, she could see that Mia was on the move again, crossing Sixtieth.

Then Susannah saw the green awning with the cartoon pig, and her heart sank. Not Sixtieth, but Sixty-first. The hijacking mommybitch had reached her destination.

“Eddie!” she shouted into the microphone. “Eddie or Roland!” And what the hell, she might as well make it a clean sweep. “Jake! Pere Callahan! We’ve reached the Dixie Pig and we’re going to have this damn baby! Come for us if you can, but be careful!”

She looked up at the screen again. Mia was now on the Dixie Pig side of the street, peering at the green awning. Hesitating. Could she read the words DIXIE PIG? Probably not, but she could surely understand the cartoon. The smiling, smoking pig. And she wouldn’t hesitate long in any case, now that her labor had started.

“Eddie, I have to go. I love you, sugar! Whatever else happens, you remember that! Never forget it! I love you! This is …” Her eye fell on the semicircular readout on the panel behind the mike. The needle had fallen out of the red. She thought it would stay in the yellow until the labor was over, then subside into the green.

Unless something went wrong, that was.

She realized she was still gripping the mike.

“This is Susannah-Mio, signing off. God be with you, boys. God and ka.”

She put the microphone down and closed her eyes.

TWELVE

Susannah sensed the difference in Mia immediately. Although she’d reached the Dixie Pig and her labor had most emphatically commenced, Mia’s mind was for once elsewhere. It had turned to Odetta Holmes, in fact, and to what Michael Schwerner had called the Mississippi Summer Project. (What the Oxford rednecks had called him was The Jewboy.) The emotional atmosphere to which Susannah returned was fraught, like still air before a violent September storm.

Susannah! Susannah, daughter of Dan!

Yes, Mia.

I agreed to mortality.

So you said.

And certainly Mia had looked mortal in Fedic. Mortal and terribly pregnant.

Yet I’ve missed most of what makes the short-time life worthwhile. Haven’t I? The grief in that voice was awful; the surprise was even worse. And there’s no time for you to tell me. Not now.