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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Should there be rules determining who--or what--is allowed to bear children?

eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: Vortex Science Fiction, volume 1, #2, 1953
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2005

44 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [200 KB], eReader (PDB) [29 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [7 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [7 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [68 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [78 KB], hiebook (KML) [88 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [80 KB], iSilo (PDB) [6 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [8 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [57 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [14 KB]
Words: 2003
Reading time: 5-8 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

They had moved me into a private room by visiting hours. There had, as usual, been trouble about the wards, and at any other time the old sensitive hurt I could never quite control would have bothered me, but today I was too happy to care. I lay in the high hospital bed, listening to the street noises, hearing the rumbling trundle of rubber-tired carts, smelling that funny smell that was familiar and strange at once, the smell that was home to me, more than any other. Down in the nursery I could hear one of the babies squalling, and clumsily, with a strange kind of emotion, I wondered if that was my little girl crying. I couldn't feel quite as I should, but I would when I got used to it a little.

My baby.

She looked just like any other baby I'd ever seen--I hadn't seen many--and of course she didn't have the regulation identifications yet. She didn't look quite human. No new baby, I thought defensively, no baby that young looks human!