ESTHER M. FRIESNER

SEA-SECTION

JUSTIN HOLDSTOCK FINALLY decided the hell with Doctor's Orders when he heard oneof the attending obstetricians ask, "What is that in there? A lobster?"

Head up like a hound about to go on point, Justin did the unthinkable: Helooked. Not just looked, but looked over the carefully erected barricade ofsterile drapes that divided his wife Jennifer into the Amazing Talking Head onone side and No Man's Land on the other. S.O.P. for Caesarian sections, yes, atextile admonition to be respected (if not feared) by all law-abidingfathers-to-be who didn't want to find themselves either losing lunch orgarnering an unscheduled nap on the O.R. floor. Marriage counselors were foreverurging couples to open up to one another, but not like this.

But Bluebeard's wife had also been told not to look, Pandora had been forbiddento peek, and by the Great Horned Steinem, Justin Holdstock was no sexist.Besides, when a member in good standing of the medical profession is supposed tobe birthing your firstborn and starts making crustacean-related comments, thenthe time for blind obedience is past.

He looked. "That's not a lobster," he said, remarkably calm for a man who hasjust gotten a look at what makes his darling wiley tick (and tock, and swoosh,and lub-dub, and the whole symphony of internal plumbing). "That is atrilobite."

"A what?" the obstetrician asked. The one holding the still-squirming segmentedbody, that is.

"A trilobite," Justin repeated. "An extinct Paleozoic ancestor of moderncrustacea. And," he added, "I fail to see why you are fooling around with suchthings when you're supposed to be birthing little Jeremiah." For the Holdstockshad gone to the technocave of the ultrasonic Sybil and there received assurancethat all the auguries (and the fetoid wingle-dangle) pointed at this baby beinga boy.

"Mister Holdstock," said the obstetrician, standing tall and aiming thetrilobite at the plaintiff's heart. "I do not make a practice of smugglinglobsters into the O.R. Not to Caesarean sections, anyway, although sometimeswhen I have to perform a holistic hysterectomy I--" He made an exasperated noiseand dropped the critter into a waiting stainless steel pan where it clankedaround in a mournful manner. "The point is, I did not bring that thing in here;I found it in there." And his gore-bedewed rubber glove indicated thestill-agape aperture of la bonne femme Holdstock.

"What?" Now Justin did show the first signs of an impending swoon. He wheeledviolently from the doctor's dramatic j'accuse pose, planted both hands on theside of the operating table beside his wife's head and said, "Jennifer, what didyou have for dinner last night?"

"Why do you want to know?" Jennie demanded petulantly. She was still nursing agrudge over the fact that she had wasted all those weeks going to LaMazeclasses, hearing a bunch of bimbos in Birkenstocks rhapsodize over becoming onewith the pain, only to wind up spread-eagled on this damn table, slit open likea tax refund, and stuck full of more diagnostic equipment than a Porsche gettinga tune-up. Thanks to an excellent anesthesiologist she was becoming one with awhole lot of chemicals instead of her authentic womanhood. Now she'd have totake up ceramics instead. And to think her baby sister dropped those ugly bratsof hers one-two-three, after maybe fifteen minutes of labor, like some refugeefrom a Pearl Buck novel!

"Maybe you'd better show him the rest," the assisting obstetrician murmured.

"What rest?" Justin was on point again.

"Over here, sir," said a nurse at the foot of the table.

"No, dammit!" the chief ob-gyn cried, having as loud a hissy fit as a surgicalmask would allow. "He is not allowed on this side of the drapes!"

"I demand to see what you're talking about!" Justin discovered that it wasimpossible for him to throw up and holler at the same time and resolved to usethis knowledge. "This is my son we're talking about here, and if something's thematter -- "

"What's the matter?" Jennifer yelled. "Is something the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter, dear," the nurse taking the head-end of the table cooedby rote. "You just relax."

"-- I am going to sue!"

And there was silence in the O.R. for the space of a moment as the dreadeds-word worked its arcane sorcery.

"Oh, what the hell," the obstetrician said, shrugging green-gowned shoulders."Let him see."

"Over here, sir," the nurse said, motioning for Justin to join her.

He did so slowly, cautiously, hoping that what he was about to see would not betoo bloody. There was just so much you could ask of a man who's only had one cupof coffee. The nurse was still beckoning him. She stood before a table wellremoved from the Main Event. On it were arranged several stainless steel panssimilar to the one which had received the trilobite. Justin looked into thefirst of these. Something with tentacles looked back.

"Squid," said the nurse. "Though damned if I know why it's stuck in that shell."Something oozed its way out from under the squid. "Snail," the nurse remarked."There's some worms in there too, somewhere, and there was an ememonee --nannynemonee -- an anemomonee -- an anem-o-ne," she articulated in triumph.

"And a starfish," Justin said, voice flatter than a chipmunk trying to cross thetrack at the Indy 500.

The nurse cast a sideways glance into the pan. "So it is."

"Nurse!" shouted the obstetrician. Something long and flippety-floppety wasdoing the hootchie-kootchie in his gloved hands. The nurse got one of the emptypans under it just in time. It twitched and writhed like a fish out of water,which it was, even if it looked eely in the extreme.

Next came the clams.

"What is going on here?" Justin bawled, or tried to. It came out atwhimper-volume and soon dwindled to a piteous mewling.

"Uh," said the obstetrician, who had his hands full with the appearance of afish who looked like he had robbed a sporting goods store of its entire supplyof ping-pong paddles.

"Sir, what do you do for a living?" the assistant ob-gyn asked.

"I'm a commodities broker."

"And, um, you get a lot of exposure to radiation with that? Toxic chemicals?Known mutagens?"

"Only the Wall Street Journal. God damn it, why is this happening?"

Making one last valiant try in the name of Rational Cause, the assistant ob-gynignored the question in favor of inquiring, "Maybe you lived in New Jersey?"

"No! And we never lived near Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Bikini Atoll, or anymovie house running an all-night Godzilla marathon either! Now you tell me whatthis is all about!"

"Jesus Christ, how the fuck many legs does this thing have?" his harriedcolleague sighed from the region of South Jennifer. Something went *clang!* intoa pan, then scrabble-scrabble-scrabble.

"Don't you know what's causing this?" Justin asked, his eyes narrow.

"Oh, well .... "The very idea of being caught without a ready answer held a moreprimal terror for any medico worth his sal volatile than even the threat of alawsuit. "It's probably all her fault," the assistant said.

"It is not!" Jennifer decreed. "Whatever it is, it isn't!"

In vain.

"I told you you should have had that pregnancy test earlier!" Justin snarled.Even though the doctor was currently scooping scorpions out of Jennifer'sabdomen, Justin suddenly felt much better about the whole situation. Havingsomeone he could blame for it all worked wonders. "God knows what you ate ordrank or smoked or snorted during those critical first two weeks!"

"And God knows how you spent those critical first two years at Yale fucking upyour germ plasm!" Jennifer countered fiercely. "Better living through chemistrymy ass! Did you think you were made of mitochondria?"

"Unworthy vessel!"

"Semen third class!"

"I want a full investigation!" Justin told the room.

"I want a divorce," Jennifer announced from the far side of the drapes.

"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," said the anesthesiologist, who was by natureand avocation a fairly laidback kinda gal.

"Huh?" said Jennifer.

"She means what goes around comes around," Justin said smugly. "I told you notto eat that third cheese straw at the Wilberforce's cocktail party, but wouldyou listen? Oh, nooooo. I bet lab tests will prove this is all on account ofexcess calcium."

"That might explain the clams," said the chief obstetrician, "but not all thesecockroaches. And the grunion."

"Keep going, I think I see a frog," said the nurse at his elbow.

"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," the anesthesiologist repeated as if it wereher mantra. "The biological development of the individual in this case the humanfetus -- repeats or summarizes the evolutionary history of that individual.Which is why my cousin Eugene has gills; but then again, his mother came fromPhiladelphia."

"Yeah, that's right!" Jennifer cried. "The human embryo goes through differentdevelopmental stages where it looks like a fish, then an amphibian, then areptile-"

"That'd be Cousin Bruce," the anesthesiologist supplied.

"-- then a bird, and finally a mammal. It climbs the evolutionary ladder fromlowest life-form to highest. I remember that from ninth grade biology!"

"So do I!" said the assistant ob-gyn brightly.

"But that's only supposed to happen in the embryo itself," Justin moaned. "Whatis it with this -- this mob scene?"

"Eeeeee-yuck, I hate snakes," said the chief obstetrician, holding something atarm's length.

"Wimp," the nurse sneered, dropping it into a vacant pan.

The assistant shrugged. "Everything's committees these days." A flight of dovesstartled everyone into silence, but the attendant pediatrician had the presenceof mind to open the O.R. door and release them.

"We're getting closer, Mrs. Holdstock," the obstetrician said. He tried to keepit light and cheerful, but the sound of his teeth grinding was perfectly audibleand even a little crunchy. "I think I've got hold of a lemur."

"Awwwwwww!" All previous hostilities were forgotten as the aforementionedcreature was indeed produced, flooding the room with immense waves ofecologically correct adorability.

"Keep it away from the snake!" someone shouted.

The sight of the lemur with its large, intelligent, stereoptic eyes didsomething to Justin. Warm fuzzies begat warm fuzzies and he fled back to hisassigned place on the North Jennifer side of the drapes. Holding his wife's hand-- being careful of the IV feed, of course -- he whispered to her, "Don't worry,darling, if they're up to lemurs, we'll be seeing little Jeremiah real soon now.Everything's gonna be all right."

"But what happened to me?" Jennifer insisted. "How did it happen? Why?" Shesounded just like some of his clients when the market went yeek-crash-thooooom.

"Honey, none of that matters," he purred in her ear. "All that matters now is--"

"It's a boy!" the obstetrician announced.

"I'll take that," the pediatrican said, swiftly and smoothly stepping into hisproper role in the ordained scheme of things.

"We'll clean up," the nurses chirped as all the absent normalcies came clickingback into place.

"I'll just run some of this stuff down to the cafeteria, what say?" said ahelpful orderly, gathering up the various fauna-filled trays and wheeling themout of the O.R. on a gurney. (The lemur was exempt -- in this world you can becute or you can be gumbo, but not both.)

"-- that we get our version of this story to the networks first," Justinconcluded.

"I love you, darling," said Jennifer, misty eyed. "And I want Geena Davis toplay me."

"Uh-oh," said the chief obstetrician. He paused, sew-'er-up tools in hand, andstared at something that only he was positioned to see.

"Is there some problem we can sue you for later, Doctor?" Justin asked calmly.

"You want to shake a suture there stitching me up?" Jennifer suggested. "I'dlike to hold my son."

"Not... just...yet," he replied. His hands were trembling. He could not lookaway. His dreadful fascination was so compelling that, as happens at the site ofall disasters, he soon drew a crowd. Within seconds Jennifer found herself allalone on the boring side of the drapes.

"What is it?" she clamored. "What's going on?"

"Oh...my...God." The nurse held her fingers to her lips -- actually her rubbergloves to her mask.

"Possibly," the pediatrician conceded.

"Is that the head?"

"Are there five fingers on that hand?"

"Is that a hand?"

"Are those wings?"

"Can I keep the lemur?"

"Is it all right if we name her Julie if she's a girl and Jason if she's not?"asked Jennifer.

"Better make a third choice," the chief ob-gyn panted, up to his elbows inhistory. "Just to be sure."

"Is Darwinism covered by my medical insurance?" asked Justin.

"Ontogeny anticipates phylogeny," said the anesthesiologist.

And somewhere once more it was Surf's up! as the next wave broke on the shores of some dim, ancestral sea.