Free Paradise Tales by Geoff Ryman Page B

human. But hey—heaps of children on the floor, right? Never know who’s sleeping with whom? I moved in with them, and I quite fancy Nilson, but I don’t love him, and I wouldn’t want to have his baby.
    Only … maybe I am.
    You are supposed to have to treat the sperm first to make them receptive to each other, and I am just not sure, there is no way to identify, when I became pregnant. But OK, we’re all one big family, they’ve both … been down there. And I started to feel strange and sick before João’s and my sperm were … um … planted.
    Thing is, we only planted one embryo. And now there’s twins.
    I mean, it would be wild, wouldn’t it, if one of the babies were Nilson and João’s? And I was just carrying it, like a pod?
    Oh, man. Happy birthday.
    Happy birthday, moon. Happy birthday, sounds of TVs, flip-flop sandals from feet you can’t see, distant dogs way off on the next street, insects creaking away. Happy birthday, night. Which is as warm and sweet as hot honeyed milk.
    Tomorrow, I’m off to Eden, to give birth.

    Forty-six years old. What a day to lose a baby.
    They had to fly me back out in a helicopter. There was blood gushing out, and João said he could see the placenta. Chefe said it was OK to send in the helicopter. João was still in Consular garb. He looked so tiny and defenseless in just a penis sheath. He has a little pot belly now. He was so terrified, his whole body had gone yellow. We took off, and I feel like I’m melting into a swamp, all brown mud, and we look out and there’s Nilson with the kids, looking forlorn and waving goodbye. And I feel this horrible grinding milling in my belly.
    I’m so fucking grateful for this hospital. The Devolved Areas are great when you’re well and pumped up, and you can take huts and mud and mosquitoes and snake for dinner. But you do not want to have a miscarriage in Eden. A miscarriage in the bowel is about five times more serious that one in the womb. A centimeter or two more of tearing and most of the blood in my body would have blown out in two minutes.
    I am one very lucky guy.
    The Doctor was João’s friend Nadia, and she was just fantastic with me. She told me what was wrong with the baby.
    “It’s a good thing you lost it,” she told me. “It would not have had much of a life.”
    I just told her the truth. I knew this one felt different from the start; it just didn’t feel right.
    It’s what I get for trying to have another baby at forty-five. I was just being greedy. I told her. É a ultima vez . This is the last time.
    Chega , she said. Enough. But she was smiling. É o trabalho do João . From now on, it’s João’s job.
    Then we had a serious conversation, and I’m not sure I understood all her Portuguese. But I got the gist of it.
    She said: it’s not like you don’t have enough children.
    When João and I first met, it was like the world was a flower that had bloomed. We used to lie in each other’s arms and he, being from a huge family, would ask, “How many babies?” and I’d say “Six,” thinking that was a lot. It was just a fantasy then, some way of echoing the feeling we had of being a union. And he would say no, no, ten. Ten babies. Ten babies would be enough.
    We have fifteen.
    People used to wonder what reproductive advantage homosexuality conferred.
    Imagine you sail iceberg-oceans in sealskin boats with crews of twenty men, and that your skiff gets shipwrecked on an island, no women anywhere. Statistically, one of those twenty men would be samesex-oriented, and if receptive, he would nest the sperm of many men inside him. Until one day, like with Nilson and João, two sperm interpenetrated. Maybe more. The bearer probably died, but at least there was a chance of a new generation. And they all carried the genes.
    Homosexuality was a fallback reproductive system.
    Once we knew that, historians started finding myths of male pregnancy all over the place. Adam giving birth to Eve, Vishnu on the