The Worth of Souls

Lilly's chest still heaved with laborious, shallow breaths. Her face was tear-streaked and her dark hair hung in dead tangled threads. But a little of her sunny nature shone through the exhaustion, like the last few rays from their window, as she, like them, beamed down at the baby in her arms. Her baby. She looked up from the white hospital bed at her husband. He was sitting near, holding her hand and looking at her with all the shock and joy of fatherhood. They were two of the three thousand in the city allowed to have children. Lilly looked back down at her beautiful daughter, framed by the bright sunset tinted sheets, and thought she'd never known pride.
They had picked her name, like most parents, nine months ago. Simone, "One of Promise." But unlike most parents that was all they had done. Lilly remembered clearly the taunts from her classmates all during her school days. Taunts because she had been left to chance instead of carefully designed like most of them. She had lacked the blond hair and talent in the trumpet that most of these children had. Then she had sworn to design the perfect child if she became a mother. But not now. Simone would be a chance mixture of her genes and those of her beloved Nicholas. He was one of the few to, like her, pass and excel the new Standards. Many things could turn out different from what they would like, but many things would surprise and delight them as well.
There was a soft knock on the door and their doctor walked into the room. The pastel colored walls seemed to smile at them as their doctor's eyes did, with a job well done. He had got a needle ready and Nick helped him gently draw some blood from Simone's tiny arm. He chatted to them contentedly.
"I thought you two might be crazy when you wanted a natural conception and THEN you didn't want an analysis. But all seems to be well. She looks quite healthy. Don't know what I was worried about with you two anyway." He smiled at Simone and then at them.
Nick switched on the green lamp on the bedside table, bathing the darkening room in a yellow light. "I had a great, great, great, great, great uncle who smuggled weapons for a living." He grinned, kidding them, but then said, "The genes were erased of course." Lilly wished a little bit that he wouldn't joke about their baby. She watched the gray headed doctor leave, laughing slightly, with their baby's DNA to analyze and log. The consequences of their choice were beginning and she was nervous. Nick sensed his wife's apprehension and leaned in.
"She's perfect," he whispered. The sleeping Simone turned slightly in her arms and Lilly knew that she was.
"Do you want to wait to see how perfect?" Nick held their Parent Planner in his hand but he didn't move his gaze from Lilly. She glanced at him. Something in his earnest stare put Lilly on her guard. Nick slowly pulled a shiny, coin sized, green disk in a plastic cover from his pocket.
"This is it," he said, holding it between two fingers for her to see.
"You didn't!"
"I couldn't help it! A nurse offered me some DNA a few months ago and I couldn't help it! I sent it to a friend who's got some experience and he put it on a disk for me." He held up a hand to keep her from interrupting. "I haven't looked at it yet. No one has. I just…" his guilty face faded into one of insecurity, "felt safer with it here." He looked up at her. She understood the fear of this decision. It was affecting him as well as her. Her eyes softened a little.
"Great!" he grinned, "Do you want to?" Lilly thought for a few seconds. A smile twitched her mouth.
"Why not?"
Nick's smile widened then vanished as he slipped the disk out of its cover and switched on their Parent Planer. They leaned in toward one another. It began to load the information. A tense moment passed in the quite hum of the little machine. Then a picture flashed up. A young woman, slightly dark tone of skin, a wave of burnet hair, smiling golden eyes. It was Simone, beautiful in a way that was impossible for the human mind to plan.
Then a green notice box appeared. Numb they read the warning in the box. NOTICE: THIS GENE PLAN IS ILLEGAL, DUE TO THE FOLLOWING GENE COMBINATION: DXS64 KLR85 R193. CLICK THE BACK BUTTON TO CHANGE THE PLAN. PLEASE NOTIFY YOUR DOCTOR OF THIS POSSIBITY.
Their eyes met over the small screen.
Time sped up again. Nick furiously pushed Reboot and then Load. This time it seemed to take forever. Again the tantalizing picture of their daughter's future flashed only to be obliterated by the green box. Nick jumped up and attacked the doctor's drawers, franticly searching for the hospital's Planer. Finally snatching one he bounded to the bed and loaded the disk into it. More painfully long seconds.
WARNING: ILLEGAL PLAN
"Did your friend get it right?"
"In twelve years he's never gotten so much as eye color wrong. "
"Is that Simone?"
Nick manipulated the dark buttons. "It all seems to match us." Silence passed. Then, "Illegal. She'll be killed." Lilly stared at the wall in front of her, trance like. Nick looked up at her, the same reality cracking on him. He waited for her to say it; to think the thought he didn't dare. A large part of him hoped she wouldn't. The second that passed stretched forever between them.
"We've got to do something."
"Lilly, what can we do?" his young face was broken in a worried grimace. "Think of her future. They won't stop until they've found her. Not with genes like that. What kind of life would that be for her?"
Lilly looked up into his eyes. Her face was curiously blank. "Life. A life" His wife was still in a state of shock. Her mind was barley working.
Nick felt every muscle in his body start to tremor with adrenaline. He was on his own. He looked around the room, shaking, planning.
Lilly watched him. She saw him clearly but felt as though she were far underwater and couldn't move. With great effort her eyes followed Nick around the room and, at the same time as Nick she saw the window.
"Give her to me." Nick stepped back over to the bed and reached both arms out for Simone. Lilly yielded the infant, the central most important thing in the world, into his arms. He felt the light, warm, cushioned weight hit his arms. He gathered the sheet from the bed, ripping and knotting. He tied a sling around himself and bundled Simone up in the rest.
He held her in his arms and looked at Lilly. He came close and they kissed goodbye. And he moved to the tiny window.
There came a soft knock on the door. He froze. Their doctor strode through the door, his bearded lips were turned down and his eyebrows creased with the concerned look of bad news. He saw them and stopped short. In a second he had taken it all in. The Parent Planner on the bed, the looks on their faces, the open window.
"Stop," he said softly, trying to look unthreatening. "Hold on, don't do anything irrational. Come back over here," in the calming, sympathetic, comforting tones that had eased the pain of death before. "It's okay. Everything's going to be alright. There is a problem with her genes. I'm not sure why it wasn't caught before now, but genetics is still a growing field, and there are still many things we don't know. What I do know," he continued, edging toward the window, "is that these genes were known to be present in many of the radicals and tyrants though out history. They were outlawed by the same bill that passed the Standards. I'm sorry…but it may be for the best. Why don't you just give her to me? Everything will be fine."
"Nick!" Lilly cried. She sized the lamp from the table and flung it as hard as she could at the doctor. It caught him around the head and he fell to the floor among shards of porcelain.
Nick looked out the window, down into the night. They were below the bright city lights but still many stories above the ground. A breeze tugged at him. He tucked the baby into the sling so he could use both of his arms and climbed out. Facing into the room now his eyes met with Lilly's for a split second, for the last time in their lives. And, as hospital attendants gathered outside her door, she watched his sandy head disappear into the night.