CHAPTER 8The high-velocity axial flight made Rybys Rommey deathly ill. United Spaceways had arranged for five adjoining seats for her, so that she could lie outstretched; even so, she was barely able to speak. She lay on her side, a blanket up to her chin.
Somberly, as he gazed down at the woman, Elias Tate said, "The damn legal technicalities. If we hadn't been held up-" He grimaced.
Within Rybys's body the fetus, now six months along, had been silent for a vast amount of time. What if the fetus dies? Herb Asher asked himself. The death of God. .. but not under cir- cumstances anyone ever anticipated. And no one, except himself, Rybys and Elias Tate would ever know.
Can God die? he wondered. And with him my wife.
The marriage ceremony had been lucid and brief, a transac- tion by the deepspace authorities, with no religious or moral over- tones. Both he and Rybys had been required to undergo extensive physical examinations, and, of course, her pregnancy had been discovered.
"You're the father?" the doctor asked him.
"Yes," Herb Asher said.
The doctor grinned and noted that on his chart.
"We felt we had to get married," Herb said.
"It's a good attitude." The doctor was elderly and well groomed, and totally impersonal. "Are you aware that it's a boy?"
"Yes," he said. He certainly was.
"There is one thing I do not understand," the doctor said. "Was this impregnation natural? It wasn't artificial insemination. by any chance? Because the hymen is intact."
"Really," Herb Asher said.
"It's rare but it can happen. So technically your wife is still a virgin."
"Really," Herb Asher said.
The doctor said, "She is quite ill, you know. From the multi- ple sclerosis."
"I know," he answered stoically.
