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said, using the phrases she’d learned. “You’ve provided a great service to the Enclave, and you will be compensated.”
    “No! Tell them to keep their filthy compensation! I want my baby.”
    The mother lunged across the room, but Gaia had expected this, and in an instant she was out of the house and moving swiftly down the dark alleyway. At the second corner, she had to stop because she was shaking so hard she was afraid she’d drop everything. The newborn made a lonely, anxious noise, and Gaia hitched her satchel more securely over her right shoulder so that she could pat the little bundle with her trembling fingers.
    “Hush,” she murmured.
    From far behind her she heard a door open, and then a distant, wild keening noise. “Please! Gaia!” the voice called, and Gaia’s heart lurched.
    She sniffed back hard and turned to face the hill. This was far worse than she’d imagined it could be. Though her ears remained primed, listening for another cry in the night, she started forward again and trod rapidly up the hill toward the Enclave. The moon cast a blue light on the dark, wood and stone buildings around her, and once her foot caught against a rock. In contrast to the urgency that drove her forward, a hollow, sleepy silence filled the air. She’d made this trip many times before on her mother’s behalf, but until tonight, it had never seemed like such a long journey. She knew the baby would be fine, even better than fine. She knew the mother would have others. More than anything, she knew it was the law that she turn this baby over and that if she didn’t, her own life and that of the mother were forfeit.
    She knew all of this, but for a moment, she wished it weren’t so. In violation of everything she’d been taught, she wished she could take this baby back to her mother and tell her, “Here, take little Priscilla. Head into the wasteland and never come back.”
    She turned the last corner, and there was the light over the arching doors of the south gate, a single, gleaming bulb in a lantern of mirrored glass that reflected the illumination onto the doors and hard-packed ground. Two guards in black uniforms stood before the two massive wooden doors. She let her hair slide forward, covering her left cheek, and instinctively turned to keep that side of her face in shadow.
    “If it isn’t a little delivery,” the taller guard said. He took off his wide-brimmed hat with a flourish and wedged it under an elbow. “Bringing us one of your mom’s babies?”
    Gaia walked forward slowly, her heart thudding against her ribs. She had to pause to catch her breath. She could almost hear the plaintive wail of the mother behind her, and Gaia feared that she was following behind on her pale, shaky legs. A bird flew overhead with a quick burst of wings. Gaia took another step forward, into the reassuring light of the lantern.
    “It’s my own,” Gaia said. “My first.”
    “Is that right?” the second guard said, sounding impressed.
    “Unassisted,” she said, unable to resist a glimmer of pride.
    She put a finger on the blanket under the infant’s chin, taking a satisfied look at the even features, the little, perfect, convex dip in the skin above her upper lip. The great gate was opening, and she glanced up to see a white-clad woman approaching. She was short, with the healthy girth of someone who ate well. Her face was mature, capable, and if Gaia was correct, eager. Gaia didn’t recognize her, but she’d seen others from the Nursery like her before.
    “Is the baby perfect?” the woman asked, coming forward.
    Gaia nodded. “I didn’t have time to clean her,” she apologized. “I had no assistant.”
    “This was your first delivery, then? There wasn’t any problem with the mother, was there?”
    Gaia hesitated. “No,” she said. “She was glad to serve the Enclave.”
    “And when was the birth?”
    Gaia pulled at the chain around her neck and pulled her locket watch out from the neckline of her